This could get very interesting very soon.

After Tuesday’s All-Star Game, after most of San Francisco and parts of the nation get done with being oblivious about Barry Bonds’ baseball sins, we will turn our attention again to the Great Home Run Scam.

The record could fall at Wrigley Field. The Giants come to Chicago for a four-game series starting July 16. They have a three-game series at home against the Dodgers before facing the Cubs. Bonds has 751 home runs, four behind Hank Aaron’s 755.

If he slows down a bit, if he doesn’t get the pitches he wants, if his knee continues to bother him … well, we in Chicago could end up watching Bonds trot his way around the bases and into the record book.

I already have vowed not to write about Bonds’ ascension to Aaron’s throne when it happens in protest against what I believe to be his fraudulent, chemical means of getting there. The possibility of the record falling at Wrigley is not problematic for me. The vow is not going to change because of geography.

But how would Chicago react to No. 756? Let’s start first with what would be done with the record-breaking home run ball. The tradition at Wrigley is that when an axis-of-evil home run enters allied territory, the offending ball is thrown back onto the field in the ultimate show of scorn and dismissal.

What would happen to Bonds’ record-breaking baseball?

I think we know the answer to that question. Any sane person, regardless of his or her loyalty to the Cubs or his or her opinion of Bonds, would keep a ball that would be worth lots of money. That’s the easy part. No one should be criticized for failing to follow the goofy tradition at Clark and Addison streets.

But how are the fans at Wrigley going to greet Bonds if he breaks the record here? That’s the harder part. Are Cubs fans going to look at history clear-eyed, which is to say skeptically?

Or are they going to pretend, as so many people continue to do, that Bonds hasn’t been a monumental cheater during his career? (For proof of his use of performance-enhancing drugs, please read “Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports.” Please note, Bonds apologists, that attorney Troy Ellerman was sentenced to two years in jail for leaking grand jury testimony to the authors of the book.)

Human nature being what it is, the likelihood is Cubs fans will cheer and take part in the celebration. The hope here is that if they do, they will feel the need for a shower soon after.

But it would be special if Bonds were greeted by silence at Wrigley. Not by boos, but by silence. A silent protest. Bonds feeds off the cynicism and anger of others. Despite all those home runs, the only thing that seems to bring him joy is his contempt for the vast majority of humans. He greets the world with a sneer. So it probably would make perfect sense to him if Wrigley either cheers him or boos him. If you cheer him, he won’t trust your admiration. If you boo him, he will believe you’re jealous.

But your silence would say so much more. It would mean so much more if Bonds could hear nothing but the wind whistling through Wrigley as he rounded the bases. Forty thousand lips zippered in unison. A ghost town greeting a fiction writer.

Give it some thought. Silence would say what Bonds accomplished didn’t really happen. It would say Aaron still has the real record.