Welcome back, Barry, you old rogue.

The former Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, recovering from hip surgery and looking sleeker than he had in years, hobbled to the pitching mound before Game 4 of the National League Championship Series last week in San Francisco and tossed out the first pitch to raucous applause. By doing so, he took another step back from the baseball wastelands, where he has roamed for more than a decade as the peerless outlaw of the Age of Steroids.

Last March, at the team’s invitation, the Giants said Bonds would appear at spring training as a hitting instructor. Bud Selig was not amused. He was about to commence his celebratory final round as commissioner, and Bonds was an unwelcome reminder of Selig’s many embarrassments.

Selig talked angrily by phone with Giants officials, according to people in Major League Baseball.

I hope Giants executives giggled into the receiver.

Baseball’s bonfire of the hypocrisies has burned bright. This past summer, the former manager Tony La Russa, the Great Enabler, was installed in the Hall of Fame. Over two decades, La Russa pulled off a feat of nonobservation of the human condition. He oversaw the careers of the grandest hulks of the age of injectables, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, without noticing anything amiss.