Tampa, Fla. ? The next great baseball moment probably will come in about five years, when Alex Rodriguez hits home run No. 763 and is greeted at home plate, one cheater to another, by Barry Bonds.

Greater still would be if that moment occurs at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington so not only can Bonds be there, but A-Rod’s former teammates on the Texas Rangers, most of whom were more jacked up than the Bulgarian Olympic women’s weightlifting team.

Best of all, probably, would be if A-Rod’s historic moment had to be witnessed by Bonds on a special closed-circuit hookup in his jail cell, where he is serving his stretch for perjury.

For those of us waiting for baseball and its cheaters to get their comeuppance, that, I’m afraid, is about as good as we can hope for.

In the week since I spoke with Bud Selig, I have thought long and hard about what the Omissioner could do to right the dreadful wrong he, his players, and the Players Association have committed upon baseball.

After much contemplation, I came up with the answer.

Nothing.

For all the tough talk from Selig and for all the hand-wringing and mea culpas coming lately from Rodriguez, the fact is, this game is rigged so that nothing of, um, substance, can be done about it.

At first I considered calling for Selig to make good on his words of last week and to declare all-out war on the union, even knowing it would be a war he could not win in the courts. Just as a show of his authority, and to prove his intentions are in the right place, I thought imposing a suspension on Rodriguez “in the best interests of basedball” might not be such a bad idea after all.

Alas, it is. Aside from the obvious, that you can’t legally punish someone for failing a drug test after you’ve assured them not only that they would not be punished, but that it would never even be revealed that they failed, how can Selig discipline A-Rod, or any other player, when he has been no more honest or honorable than any of them?

Like A-Rod, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte and the rest of them, Selig has copped to any misconduct for only one reason.

He got caught.

The same way Rodriguez admitted his drug use only after SI got the goods on him, Selig spent nearly a decade deflecting talk of baseball’s burgeoning steroid problem until it was revealed that he knew about it all along. His pleas of impotence in the face of union stubbornness only confirmed what we suspected about him all along.

Rodriguez has performed his public act of contrition and considers his responsibility in this whole affair to have been satisfied. (Still, I will continue to monitor his promised involvement with the Taylor Hooton Foundation).

He will continue to collect his paychecks and hit his home runs on his inevitable slog toward taking possession of what used to be baseball’s most cherished record.

Now, it is its most tarnished.

Baseball will not only live with that, but thrive on it.

Until that day about five years from now when Rodriguez is rounding the bases after home run No. 763, with no one but a collection of his co-conspirators to greet him.