The first thing you wonder is how long it will take for Barry Bonds to apologize.

Pete Rose held out more than 15 years. Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it. Didn’t do it. Oh, all right, I did it. Forgive me. Take me back. Love me again.

The clock will begin ticking on Bonds if he is convicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. That isn’t a sure thing. The government’s case must be very thin, or it wouldn’t have taken four years and two grand juries to squeeze an indictment from the pastry tube.

But if Bonds is found guilty, if he serves even one day of the 30 years that are possible under the terms of the indictment, eventually he will have to say he is sorry.

Because baseball will have no choice in the matter otherwise. Bonds, like Rose, will have to be banned from any official connection to the game. He will be prevented from appearing on the Hall of Fame ballot. The home-run king, like the hit king, will become a ghost who walks the shadowy tree line and never enters the light. He will become an ex-person, at least as far as the national pastime is concerned.

Bonds won’t give up without a fight. If the Pete Rose Experience is instructive at all, it teaches that once you get put outside the tent, coming back in isn’t so easy.

The fight goes beyond that for Bonds right now, which has something to do with that 30 years of potential incarceration. He has to fight for his freedom before he can fight for his legacy, but he’ll get to the legacy part eventually.

The Bonds and Rose cases are dissimilar in some ways. Rose went to jail for tax evasion but was banned from baseball because of the report filed by investigator John Dowd, a report that detailed Rose’s alleged gambling issues.

Baseball chose to nail Rose with the Dowd report, as then-commissioner Bart Giamatti acted in the “best interests of the game” when it banned Rose.

The same difficult decision might be spared current commissioner Bud Selig – no doubt, Bud would like to avoid it as he has avoided all others – if Bonds is found guilty. Once the guy is in prison, having been convicted of lying about whether he knowingly used steroids, banning him will be an easy call.

What if, however, Bonds beats the rap? There is evidence, obviously, but unless the government has something it has not previously disclosed, the case is based on circumstantial assumptions and hearsay.

The feds have a truckload of files from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Some apparently indicate that urine tests taken by Bonds show the presence of anabolic steroids. They also have schedules for drug administration and receipts and testimony, and did we mention the 73 home runs one year?

All of which is great, but it is Greg Anderson, Bonds’ personal trainer, who holds the keys here. If Bonds was smart enough to deal only with Anderson, to get drugs only from Anderson – if he indeed got drugs – then this case might only have warning-track power.

Anderson refused to testify. He was jailed for contempt while the grand juries still were sitting. On Thursday, the judge presiding over the most recent grand jury ordered Anderson released.

This will take quite a while to play out fully. And it will be a longer wait, if ever, before all the facts are known about the steroid era in baseball.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Barry’s apology, either.