SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds sat in the Giants' dugout after his fifth day of workouts Friday talking with a cancer patient and her family when the inevitable question came up.

"Are you going to play tonight?" he was asked. The answer was "no," but the rejoinder is all anyone needs to know.

"I'm close, real close," Bonds said.

In all probability, the third leading all-time home run hitter will be activated Monday and be back in the Giants' starting lineup that night, 225 days after the first of three surgeries this year on his right knee.

"I think Monday is going to be the day," Bonds told MLB.com prior to Friday night's rematch between the Giants and Cubs.

The timing is the opening of a three-game series at SBC Park against the first-place Padres, who began the night with a seven-game lead over the Dodgers and Giants in the National League West.

Bonds could still slip into the lineup during the weekend, but he's planning to take Saturday off from his intense workout schedule and pick it up again Sunday before resuming his pursuit of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron for the all-time homer record. Bonds finished the 2004 season at 703, 11 behind Ruth's 714 and 52 away from Aaron's 755.

Asked Friday how he'd like to integrate Bonds back into the lineup, manager Felipe Alou uttered one simple word: "Start."

Explaining the probable wait until Monday, Bonds said that he, the Giants and Dr. Lewis Yocum, the Angels' chief orthopedic surgeon, are being cautious because of the cool San Francisco Bay Area climate and the reaction of the knee to the increased pace of the workouts.

"[Yocum] is being very cautious of this weather here," Bonds said. "If it was sunny and hot and stuff like that, maybe we'd be talking about playing earlier. He told me, 'Because of the arthritis in your knee, I don't want something to happen the first day you're out there in that freezing, cold weather. Then we're right back where we started from. I don't want that. I want to make sure that knee is fine.'"

Bonds has been under the care of Yocum and physical therapist Clive Brewster since June 24.

He began working out with the team Monday in Los Angeles after a week of taking batting practice in a cage. Since then, he has felt no adverse effects from being back on a baseball field, although he doesn't want to push it. Bonds was so intent on taking Saturday off, he told Giants left-handed batting-practice pitcher John Yandle to also take the day.

Yandle responded by telling Bonds he'd be back Sunday.

Yocum wants to see continued improvement in the knee before he gives the final OK for him to play, Bonds said.

"I've got to tell him what my knee feels like and looks like," Bonds said. "I can't fool him. He knows what's happening. He knows what's going on. I won't push it. I wouldn't even try. He won't let me."

Through Friday night, the 41-year-old Bonds had missed all 140 Giants games this season. The count will have reached 142 if he comes back Monday, the most games by far he'd have missed in a single season during his 20-year career.

Bonds missed 60 games in 1998 because of surgery on his right elbow and that same right knee.

On Friday, Bonds had an explosive round of batting practice, bolting shots into the far reaches of the ballpark. He then went into the outfield and did some hard sprinting with Giants trainers Harvey Shields and Greg Oliver, who both work with Bonds on a day-to-day basis.

Upon his return to the dugout, a sweating Bonds was met by the Lewis family, who were decked out in Giants home jerseys compliments of the team. The family -- cancer patient Paulita, her husband Bruce, daughter Erin, 11, and son Hunter, 9 -- had been hastily invited to meet with Bonds during a trip to San Francisco.

The family is having its home in El Segundo, Calif., remade by ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and won't return to the Los Angeles area until the house is ready Tuesday.

The family was selected because Paulita Lewis was diagnosed earlier this year with thymic carcinoma, a rare cancer that strikes the thymus, a small organ in the upper chest below the neck that produces a form of white blood cells before birth and during childhood.

While she was undergoing surgery May 9 to remove what Paulita called a tumor "the size of two tennis balls" in her upper chest, she had a pair of heart attacks.

"I'm just lucky to be alive," she said.

Three to four hours of surgery turned into nine grueling hours. Because the tumor had become so entangled in blood vessels and tissue, doctors could remove only half of it. She has just concluded her fourth cycle of chemotherapy in an attempt to shrink the rest.

Meeting with someone in that condition was enough to put Bonds' own problems this year into perspective, he said. He had surgery to remove meniscus from the knee on Jan. 31 and March 17. And after a serious bacterial infection set in that threatened the very existence of his lower right leg, Bonds had surgery again on May 2 to eradicate that infection.

"It's tough," Bonds said. "You just look into these people's eyes and you can understand their problems, feel their emotions. Truly, I haven't had it that bad."

And come Monday, he may be out on a baseball field again, where he always has been able to prove it.