SAN FRANCISCO - The name finally fits. Bonds is always dangerous. Bonds is often resourceful. There is no situation, no season that Barry Bonds feels uncomfortable in, not any longer, not after he has made this, his sixth and most successful postseason, a daily debate, a daily seminar, on how to play against him.

Walk him purposely. Pitch to him carefully. Let him hit, but give him nothing to hit. And even then, pray for the best and expect the worst.

"It does give others opportunity," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa rued before the Giants advanced to their first World Series since 1989 with a 2-1 victory, a victory propelled by Bonds' eighth-inning, game-tying sacrifice fly. "But right now, if you had to choose between Barry and somebody else in that lineup, you've still got to take your chances with the other guy."

As always, the strategy was based on execution and inches. As usual, success and failure was a matter of the latter. Bonds didn't miss a grand slam by much in the eighth, his first-pitch swing on Matt Morris' 95 mph fastball.

In the fourth inning, with a runner on second, the hard-luck Cardinals' starter left a fastball over the outside of the plate that Bonds crushed to left, but the low, sinking liner was snared by Eli Marrero. Then, in the sixth, Bonds moved to the on-deck circle with two runners on and nobody out. But Jeff Kent grounded into a third-to-first double play, and Morris did what the Cardinals and Braves had done 13 times already this postseason.

Bonds was walked. For the sixth time in this postseason, intentionally.

After last night's one-walk, one-RBI night, Bonds' postseason statistics read as follows: four home runs and a triple, eight hits in 28 at-bats, .285 average, 10 RBI, 10 runs scored.

La Russa had been like an emu in the rain when it came to Bonds this series. Walk him and someone else came through, as Benito Santiago did Sunday and J.T. Snow did last week in St. Louis.

Pitch to him and lose a three-run lead, as Chuck Finley found out Saturday.

"When I let the ball go," Finley said after Bonds torched his inside pitch into McCovey Cove for a three-run homer, "I thought the worst that can happen is, he pulls it foul."

Of his major league record 198 walks this season, 68 are listed as intentional. While this, too, is a major league record, he likely would have twice that many if four-pitch walks were counted as intentional - which at the major league level, they should be.

Over the last two seasons, his 37th and 38th years on earth, Bonds has set major league records in home runs, slugging percentage and on-base percentage as well as those mentioned above.

All were once owned by Babe Ruth. But Bonds' dominance over the last two seasons has a more recent parallel in Michael Jordan - during his prime.

Remember, Bonds is 38. At 39, Jordan finds himself fighting - on a team he owns - to remain an NBA starter.

At 38, Bonds has humbled baseball, and not the other way around. Hit for power? Watch this. I'm on steroids? Take this .370 average and explain that by steroids.

This is how he communicates to us, a public that he awes and irks in equal doses. Still, the bizarre and belligerent bore he was from his first years as a Pirate, has mellowed over recent years. He is a better teammate, a less selfish ballplayer - as his sacrifice fly exemplified last night.

He was even gracious in victory. "These last few games were fun," he said. "That's a great team over there. They battled, we battled. They are a great group of guys."

He is at least a few years removed from brooding about his critics. Surely it is a basis of motivation, a common thread that often is the difference between diminished or elevated play during the postseason. But it was instructive last night that, given a softball toss of a chance to address his past postseasons, that he instead spoke of the future, of the first all wild-card World Series that begins in Anaheim on Saturday.

"It's not over," he said of his first trip to the Series, in his 17th season. "We have a tough series ahead of us."

Bonds used to wilt under this kind of heat. Wasn't that why he wasn't going to break Mark McGwire's home-run record?

It would get to August, and September, and the media entourage and barrage would make him press and pout. His dismal performances in the postseason were a topic as the Giants secured the wild-card slot with a winning September.

Now? Now he is Bonds, doing what it is said to be impossible in this sport. Barry Bonds is not humbled by baseball. He humbles it.

And in this 2002 postseason, he has left the vanquished all but bowing to him.