From the mouths of babes.

Please, please. Pitch to my daddy.

And so, as the children of Barry Bonds stayed up past their bedtimes Wednesday night, the home run race was finally humanized.

It took this long -- 158 games -- to feel the tingle, but Barry Bonds has two daughters and a son to tuck in on his current road trip to 71, and you find yourself rooting for him now. He has a wife who sits biting her nails, and he has a son who is the new Giants batboy, and the sight of it all brings us back to Mark and Matt McGwire. It brings us back to autumn of '98, when we watched a baseball player -- in one single home run trot -- transform into a father. Mark McGwire's 62nd home run would not have been the same, would not have been as much for the ages, if his 12 year-old son had not been waiting at home plate with the bat and a cherubic grin.

We can still see McGwire lifting his son up, by the hips, and we admired him for it. And we're going to admire Barry Bonds when he does this, too.

He may still be the same condescending Barry Bonds, but just the glimpse of his family reminds us that he's somebody's dad, and somebody's son and somebody's godson. We probably should've remembered that before, back when we hissed at him and rooted for a fly out to center. But now that he's here on the cusp of 70, all of us -- or at least the ones with the slightest bit of sentimentality -- want to see Barry and Nikolai Bonds embrace this week at home plate.

It probably won't bring you to tears, not like the McGwires did, because it's so, so different. The record has only stood three years, not 37, and so that minimizes it. And the Maris family won't be standing there as they were in '98, all of them so forlorn. Their father was gone, and now his record was going, too, and the home run chase brought Roger Maris back to life in a way, for an instant, and it all added up to a bittersweet evening. You were happy for McGwire and sensitive to the Marises -- with their mom hospitalized and all -- and everyone I know had a lump in their throats.

Who will Bonds have there? Well, he'll have Bud Selig. And the baseball commissioner is definitely making the correct move in following Bonds around, because it's an absolute must. If he did it for McGwire, he must be there for Bonds -- bottom line. When Bonds breaks this record, baseball must stop the game, and there must be speeches, and there must be Willie Mays (Bonds' godfather), and there must be a video hook-up with you-know-who.

Mark McGwire.

Obviously, McGwire cannot be there when Bonds goes deep for 71 -- for logistic reasons, of course -- and so that's a layer that's missing. That's why this is not as compelling as '98. Not even close. Because if McGwire could be there, with his now-teenage son, we would see the truths of all of this. We'd see the emotion of the McGwires, and their potential feelings of loss, and the passing of this torch. We'd see them standing there, watching Barry and his son at home plate and Barry and his daughters nearby. And it would be some sight.

A sight that now I really want to see.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.