Watching Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent in a knockdown, drag-out baseball fight (read: two shoves and a lot of F-bombs) brought back heart-tugging memories of the fighting A's of the early '70s, the fighting Yankees of the late '70s, and the fighting Serbs and Croats of the late '90s.

It also reminded us that when players and managers say something is none of our business, well, we'll be the judge of that.

But what it means for the Giants and their two cranky high-ticket items is basically nothing ... at least nothing in the short run.

You see, Kent and Bonds aren't going to make up. They hate each other, and they've hated each other since the day they first set eyes on each other. They know it, we know it, and they know that we know. If they could beat each other with bats in the clubhouse, the only thing stopping them would be waiting for the clubhouse kids to put tarps over all the other lockers.

They are at least that thoughtful.

But they would fight alone because they do not have allies in the room. They are almost pathological loners in a baseball sense, and almost every other Giant looks at Kent and Bonds the way steelworkers look at a Bessemer converter --- you can't do the job without the right equipment.

But though the rest of the Giants recognize that the two of them have made plenty of money for them all, they do sometimes wish both Bonds and Kent were someone else's problem. Say, the Peruvians'.

Which is why this little spat, which Kent claims is only one of at least a half-dozen such testoster-offs between the two, really isn't an earth-shattering development for the organization.

One, neither of them will be traded. Not Bonds, because he can't be replaced by anyone; and not Kent, because he can't be replaced by anything the Giants have or are likely to get in exchange. General manager Brian Sabean knows that while he can survive with teammates who wish to perform medical experiments on each other, he cannot survive without them hitting third and fourth in the lineup.

Besides, they're both 10-and-5 guys, and can't go anywhere unless they approve.

Two, if Kent is right in saying he and Bonds have done this before (and given his tissue of whoppers surrounding his midnight motorcycle ride in spring training, we should tread gently as regards his word), the Giants have survived with them shooting nasty looks at each other for five years, and can squeeze out another three months before Kent is free to exercise his various pathologies on another team.

Because, and this is the kicker, the Giants aren't going to win or lose because of their clubhouse harmony. They're going to win because Kent will start driving in runs, and because they will get some real offense out of their first and third basemen, and because they will find a leadoff hitter worthy of the name, and because setup man Felix Rodriguez will lower his ERA enough to convince people that he doesn't have malaria.

Or they'll lose because none of those things will happen.

Now, if either Kent or Bonds succeeds in actually killing the other, then you can say that clubhouse harmony was a factor. The time lost to depositions and police interviews will play hob with batting practice, if nothing else.

Otherwise, this was just the latest manifestation of a traditionally weird clubhouse, one which has been kept relatively united by manager Dusty Baker for nearly 10 years and can suffer through three more months without anyone's soul being imperiled.

So if Kent wants out, as he allegedly said Tuesday night after pulling himself away from the dugout wall, he'll have to wait until November. And he'll have to do more to enhance his value than he has the past year and a half. And if he does those two things, the Giants will be better off in the short run, which is all there is in the modern baseball landscape.

But we do need to thank them for the entertainment Tuesday night. Even if they didn't actually throw hands, they at least let us see how close baseball players actually can get to sharing their true feelings with us.

And like we said -- yes, it is our business.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com