The sound is the thing, enough to wake you from a deep sleep. The sound is different, more resonant, more insistent. When Barry Bonds makes solid contact, it's not sufficient to describe it as the crack of the bat. Those words are dead, mundane. They're for somebody else, some 25-homer-a-year third baseman, because when the ball leaves Bonds' bat, it's more like a report.

If you listen closely, you'll discover that it's starting to sound like 1998, when Mac and Sammy spent their summer vacations making this same sound. Around PacBell Park, there's only one legitimate topic of discussion. You walk around and hear it everywhere, two questions: Can he do it? and Can you believe it?

No. 54 came Saturday, on the preposterously early date of Aug. 18, and it's getting harder to find reasons why Bonds won't be able to make a legitimate run at 71. He gave a partial refutation of one of the theories when he turned on a chest-high 2-2 fastball from the Braves' Jason Marquis and drove it over the rightfield wall faster than you can duck.

You see, he's not supposed to be able to do it because his team is in a pennant race and he's not that well-liked and nobody's going to pitch to him. They'll walk him, or pitch around him, especially in the late innings of a close game.

But what the box score doesn't show is that Marquis gave up No. 54 on a pitch that looked like a pitching-around-him pitch. Ninety-four on the inside half, a few inches above the letters, which was Marquis saying, "Knock yourself out," the best way he knows how. The mortal response from a left-handed hitter is either a popup behind third or a topper to first. With Bonds, it's a cartoon screamer toward McCovey Cove.

And as for that can-you-believe-it part: The answer is no, at least for now. But if we're judging by the sound of things, we'd better get used to it.

E-mail Tim Keown at tim.keown@espnmag.com.