The charges imposed by a US federal grand jury against baseball's supreme hitter, Barry Bonds, are as much an indictment of a culture which tolerated the bending of rules as a man apparently determined to ignore them.

For years, Bonds hit home runs at a rate which finally took him past the record of 755 held by Hank Aaron, and they cheered his achievement, hailed it to the rooftops - despite the constant chatter which accompanied each and every occasion when a ball soared beyond the fence.

Now, just three months on, the talk is not just of whether Bonds used steroids. It is of potential conviction, jail-time and a complete shredding of his reputation.

In San Francisco, where he spent the bulk of his career, Bonds was revered, even when the rumours surfaced that he was juiced'. The passage of time is meant to rob hitters of their power, yet after the age of 35, Bonds kept on swinging, bolstered by a rapidly acquired muscular frame.

It could not be done, they cried. Not naturally, at least. And amid an ongoing investigation into the now discredited Balco Laboratories, his name was ever present in the quest for the truth.

He was not alone, of course. Marion Jones and Dwain Chambers were also caught in the web. Bonds, though, was the biggest name available. And among the 10 pages of the indictment are assertions that he failed a drug test for anabolic steroids in 2000 - a test administered not by Major League Baseball but by Balco's owner, Victor Conte, and his medicinal crew.

What is now at issue, and what threatens to put Bonds behind bars, is the testimony he provided three years later. When informed that there was evidence of his use of performance enhancers in documents found during a raid on Balco, he denied - as he has done consistently since - that it was accurate. According to the court papers, he would lie 18 times more under oath.

As Jones found recently to her cost, such infractions attract severe penalties. The now disgraced Olympian was convicted on similar charges last month and is expected to be sentenced in the new year to at least six months in prison.

Bonds may have thought his day in court, now scheduled for December 7, would never come. However, while he was on his tour de force around America and extending his home run mark to 762, prosecutors were finishing off their dossier.

So much for the flax-seed oil which, he insisted, was his only pharmaceutical assist.

Baseball, which dithered far too long before installing its own testing programme, must share the blame for nurturing an environment which, unwittingly or not, allowed cheats to prosper. Even Conte is now calling for the World Anti-Doping Agency to be allowed to delve deeper and enforce its policies for the "good of the sport".

Should Bonds be convicted, he is unlikely to be admitted into baseball's Hall of Fame. His records, already asterisked in the minds of many, could be obliterated.

The Giants, who cut him loose at the end of the season, have already begun to distance themselves.

"This is a very sad day," a club spokesperson said. "For many years, Barry Bonds was an important member of our team and is one of the most talented baseball players of his era. These are serious charges. Now that the judicial process has begun, we look forward to this matter being resolved in a court of law."

Ironically, news of the indictment over-shadowed baseball's other big news, that Alex Rodriguez had agreed a new contract with the New York Yankees, just weeks after spurning their previous overtures. It is worth a gargantuan £140m over 10 years.

Significantly there are incentives for A-Rod to surpass Bonds' home run mark. For baseball, though, the cost of allowing one man to cast a shadow over the game may come at a higher price.