Diamond Blues

With opening day upon us, baseball's steroid scandals have shattered a nation's innocence. Don't we all feel betrayed? Barry Bonds doing all those drugs, and he never got into a single coke-fueled three-way with Kate and Naomi? For shame! First, he starts filming a reality show. Then Game of Shadows nails him for 'roids (which Bonds denies), and America realizes its heroes have been shooting up cow hormones. Damn it, if only MC Hammer had a blog, so he could explain the moral complexities of this situation. Hey, wait! MC Hammer does have a blog! "Don't let the bloodhounds win," he urges. Bonds has a blog too, but he doesn't bother denying the drugs -- instead, he brags about bowling with Michael Bolton, and that's even grosser than cow hormones.

Baseball fans always wondered about the long-ball explosion. Was it juiced baseballs? Brady Anderson's appearance on Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Actually, most of these jocks had bloodstreams like a Motley Cr?e afterparty. But the sport happens under artificial conditions, whether it's steroids, segregation or the DH. Throwing out Bonds' records is like throwing out Babe Ruth's records because he never faced black pitchers. Drugs are as all-American as baseball. There's Bill "Spaceman" Lee, who sprinkled pot on his pancakes, and Dock Ellis, who pitched a no-hitter on acid, and Tim Raines, who slid headfirst to protect the vial of cocaine in his back pocket.

When I was a kid, I worshipped the Red Sox's Carl Yastrzemski, and you know why? He smoked. To me that meant he cared, because he was willing to sacrifice his health for the good of the team. Yaz drank salted beers, endorsed kielbasa and had that excellent vowels-are-for-pussies name. That's a real badass baseball star. When he acted like a creep, nobody ever said, "That's Yaz being Yaz" -- back then, baseball players were supposed to be creeps.

Baseball is a game of screwed-up, emotionally crippled humans, and that's its essence. You don't go back and jigger the results of the 1978 pennant race because Bucky Dent used a corked bat. You don't take away "Black Jack" McDowell's Cy Young Award because he hung out with Pearl Jam. Umpires blow calls. Pitchers marry chicks who used to be in Whitesnake videos. If these people were sane, they wouldn't go near baseball.

These days, baseball is supposed to be good for you, like Pilates or oat bran. But the fact is, baseball ruins your arms, your knees, your brain, your moral integrity. (And that's just rooting for the Braves.) Barry Bonds might be the last old-school scumbag in baseball. And for that, he deserves his plaque in Cooperstown. Right next to the guy who married the Whitesnake chick. She was hot.