As far as I’m concerned, Barry Bonds is a first ballot Hall Of Famer. The Debating Hall Of Fame, that is. The Sultan Of Surly shared the following thoughts Thursday with ESPN.com’s Pedro Gomez.

“You want to define cheating in America? When they make a shirt in Korea for a $1.50 and sell it here for 500 bucks? And you ask me what cheating means? I’ll tell you how I cheat. I cheat because I’m my daddy’s son. He taught me the game. He taught me things nobody else knows. So that’s how I cheat. I’m my daddy’s son.”

Bonds said he was equally disgusted by what he says is exploitation of young steroid users in news reports. At the same time, he said he would reign down with fury if his teenaged son, Nikolai, ever experimented with steroids.

“It busts me up when they show some teenager who’s been on steroids and his life is suddenly messed up,” Bonds said. “It’s the parents job to be a parent to that kid. It’s like when my son says to me, ‘aren’t you my friend?’ Hell no, I’m not your friend. I’ll be a friendly dad, but I’m not your best friend. I love you. The system doesn’t love you. You think the system is going to do for you what I will? I want what’s best for you. I tell my boy, if I see you doing steroids, I’ll bust you up. And I mean it. ”

One of the points often made to show Bonds may have used some kind of steroid or other performance enhancing substance, is his allegedly enlarging cranium. Without prompting, he willingly addressed that topic with this statement:

“What’s all this about my head size?” Bonds asked. “My hat size is the same today as when I started. My head hasn’t grown. I’ve always been a 7-1/4 to a 7-3/8 my whole career. You can go check. Sometimes you get one and you sweat, it gets smaller, so you go a size up or a size down. Those things shrink when you sweat or they get wet during a season.

“I saw a 13-year-old kid on one of the news shows talking about my head size. How do they know? That kid hasn’t seen 15 years of my career and he’s talking about my head size. That’s one of the saddest things, man. That’s manipulation. They manipulated that kid.”

Bonds even brought up another alleged side affect of using steroids, a reduction in size of genitalia.

“They say it makes your testicles shrink,” he said. “I can tell you my testicles are the same size. They haven’t shrunk. They’re the same and work just the same as they always have.”