Roommates Wanted

With the Barry Bonds witch hunt in full force, baseball shouldn’t forget the other key players.About a year ago, after greedily consuming the March 2005 contents of Sports Illustrated’s “Baseball In The Asterisk Era” and ESPN’s “Up In Arms,” I leapt to my keyboard.

Like much of the nation, I was entranced by the influx of information surrounding baseball’s most enigmatic character, Barry Bonds.

But unlike everybody caught up in the wave of “groundbreaking news” wrapped around the seams of the most loaded ideology in the history of baseball, I balked at the lack of evidence.

Fact was, amidst all the accusations and slander, nobody was actually talking about steroids.

Or steroid pre-cursors. Or insulin. Human Growth Hormone. Female infertility drugs.

The wonders of flaxseed oil.

And few took the step back to lament the biggest sham in the whole ordeal:

baseball wasn’t even testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

Of any kind.

Fast-forward a calendar year and that’s all changed.

To the chagrin of the Player’s Association, retired slugger Jose Canseco named names and proved he can, in fact, read and write in his book Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant `Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big.

Feeling the heat from Congress, Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB rectified their laughable first run at a drug testing regime by issuing sports’ toughest policy: 50 games for first-time offenders, 100 the second time around and a lifetime ban for a third positive test.

Stiffer penalties exist for steroid possession and distribution.

Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams all but picked Bonds’ inmate number with Game of Shadows. And while convictions of perjury (plausible) and tax evasion (probable) are left to grand jury deliberations, Bonds is finished in the court of public opinion.

And though it’s become increasingly impossible to support, root or even hope for Bonds as he chases the ghosts of Ruth and Aaron, I’m wondering why everyone else is getting a free pass.

Does anyone see the parallels between Bonds and Mark McGwire beyond the arch of their home runs and the debilitating knee injuries? Don’t they remember the monstrous man who limped out of baseball with 29 home runs and a .187 batting average in 2001? Or does Big Mac get a free pass because he’s best friends with his ex-wife’s new husband and switches to the tear-duct-on-cycle with the precision of a housemaid doing the laundry?

Did anyone else notice that as Sammy Sosa’s home run totals plummeted from 64 in 2001 to 14 a season ago, he wore as many layers as an Alaskan ice fishing outfit under his uniform to appear as jacked-up as his 1998 bodybuilder physique? Or did Slammin’ Sammy receive a get-out-of-jail-before-serving-any-time pass because baseball was “berry, berry” good to him?

Is it any wonder that Brett Boone’s career nosedived with all the grace of a kamikaze pilot? That his biceps matched his gargantuan production from 2001-2003: three consecutive 100-RBI seasons with years of 37 and 35 home runs as bookends from a wispy, 180-pounder with a career .266 batting average who produced a meager seven home runs in 443 at-bats as recently as 1997?

Is there a better destination for Jeff Bagwell’s mangled shoulder than the fossil room (insert city, state, museum site here)? Could space be reserved for Albert Belle’s chronic hips, the ball-and-sockets that derailed his manic, Hall of Fame potential? Drug cycles contribute to the ferocity of broken-down bodies. They’re also linked to rapid body mass fluctuation (Bagwell looks like a Little Leaguer wearing his father’s uniform) and irrational behavior (see: Belle’s penchant for throwing baseballs at reporters, chasing trick-or-treaters in his SUV).

Could a better forum exist for Rafael Palmeiro’s second career than the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute? Only on Hollywood Boulevard, where Palmeiro’s affinity for falsehood (demonstrative finger-waving optional) could easily prosper. But despite blatantly lying to Congress and testing positive for Stanozolol, he’s likely to clear perjury charges; because the drug clears your system in three to four weeks, proof that it was in his system when he testified doesn’t exist.

Does anyone even remember Brady Anderson’s 50-homer season of 1996?

Nearly ten year prior to Bonds’ assertion that The Cream and The Clear were nothing more than flaxseed oil to heal his aching joints, Anderson credited his newfound power stroke to the supplement. But those 50 round-trippers were almost one quarter of his career total. In the 14 years before and after his well-oiled run, Anderson produced 160 total home runs, an average of 11.4 per season.

Go ahead and Google Brady Anderson. The hard-bodied pictures don’t lie, but did he?

Was former NL MVP Ken Caminiti’s death and cocaine abuse a final rallying cry for help in the wake of steroid-induced depression? 1996 also happened to be Caminiti’s finest: his .326 average, 40 home runs, 130 RBI and Gold Glove defense earned him that MVP and paced the San Diego Padres into the playoffs.

And of course, Anderson (the light-hitting lead-off man) and Caminiti (an admittedly notorious booze hound) were an awkward preclusion to the era-defining peak years of McGwire and Sosa, ferocious hitters credited with saving the game of baseball and infusing Bonds with a jealousy so profound, he had no choice but to push the needle (into) himself.

And I’ll buy that argument about bobble-head-Barry.

I just hope that former U.S. senator George Mitchell, the man Selig has named to investigate steroids in baseball, provides Bonds with a few potential roommates.