This article is a cautionary tale about Barry Bonds and baseball as we enter the eve of the 2006 season.

Instead of celebrating the game's grand opening across this great land of ours, Bonds and baseball must look at themselves in the mirror. They can't like what they see. Let's play 'what if' for just a moment. What if Bonds were to look inward at himself ?What would he see? A man over the last eight years who has amassed home runs at an alarming, astounding rate and is on the precipice to challenge and overtake the most hallowed record in all of professional sports. The reason for including only the last eight years of Bonds' historic career? That brings us back to the 1998 season where Bonds begins to artificially inflate himself(allegedly) with substances that bring us to where we are today. He's not happy with his Hall of Fame numbers. Chicks dig the long ball and Bonds decides if that's the direction the game is going in I'm going to be leading that train. Over the next eight years, from 1998 to the present he morphs himself from the slim trim five tool player he was through his early years with the Pittsburgh Pirates to his present day stature. The question is: Would he be where he is today if he was secure in his own skin, so to speak, or to look at him now and think of the cat that just swallowed the canary? Or several canaries. Fans of baseball. You be the judge. Of course, this analysis is all predicated on the fact that Bonds would even choose to reflect on his life today and all that he has become in his relentless pursuit of fame and glory. How dare anyone assault his character, integrity, and motivation as he continues his assault on the record books. He feigns indifference to all the allegations that surround him but will occasionally pop off to the media or anyone that happens to be a convenient target on how he's so misunderstood. And he's not averse to throw in the race card when it suits his fancy.

Remember, that's how all this got started. Bonds' prodigious numbers done cleanly to that point(we think) were being dwarfed by the big boppers. The Bash Brothers across the Bay in Oakland Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were hitting a lot of big flies and Bonds wanted some of that. If you read the excerpt from the recently released “Game of Shadows” in Sports Illustrated it tells of the time McGwire's Cardinals were in San Francisco and the batting cage had been roped off for batting practice. This was when McGwire was chasing Babe Ruth's single season home run record. The ropes were to keep the media swarm at arms length around the cage. Upon seeing this Bonds was furious and unleashed a few F bombs and said 'not in my house'. Bonds also didn't take kindly to all the media attention swirling about McGwire and the Cubs Sammy Sosa who was also in the chase. Maybe if Bonds didn't treat the media with such contempt even to this day, do you think maybe, just maybe he'd be thought of differently the steroid cloud not withstanding. You don't have to be a media darling. But when you're chasing records, not rainbows it kinda goes with the territory don't ya think?

But Bonds has chosen to represent himself differently. He answers to no one. Well maybe his late dad Bobby Bonds and his godfather Willie Mays. Look in the mirror? Not Bonds. Not yesterday, not today and not tomorrow. Bonds has chosen to ignore the obvious. The body of evidence against him is virtually overwhelming. Not only the evidence but his body itself. How his appearance has changed so dramatically over the last eight years. He is at the flashpoint of this entire steroid scandal. He acknowledges nothing and has already said he has no intention of reading “Game of Shadows” and doesn't plan on cooperating with any further investigations. How he was not called to testify before Congress last year along with Canseco, Palmiero, Sosa and McGwire is puzzling. And to think that when Canseco's book “Juiced” came out last year virtually everyone dismissed it as the ramblings of a washed up blackballed ex major league slugger looking to cash in after being denied several opportunities to chase the 500 homer plateau leaving him 27 short. Turns out that Canseco had the juice and his story had some elements of fact and wasn't just pure fiction.

During the original BALCO investigation Bonds was given immunity to testify but wasn't given immunity against perjuring himself which many feel he did. The authors of “Game of Shadows” privy to grand jury testimony by BALCO founder Victor Conte and Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson refute much of what Bonds testfied to. Obviously, it is important to note that Bonds has not been convicted or indicted on anything. He's never tested positive for any banned substances and couldn't be tested last year because he was injured and only appeared in 14 games. While rehabbing last year that gave Bonds plenty of time to wash out anything illegal that may have been coursing thru his system for all you conspiracy theorists out there. But one of the reasons Bonds and so many other athletes sought out Conte and BALCO was that he had the goods. Designer steroids that were able to escape testing. Lightning in a bottle, syringe, cream or liquid.

Innocent till proven guilty? That's what our court system dictates. Our prisons are full with those who claim their innocence.. And some perhaps rightly so. The painstaking documentation detailed in the book has Bonds' fingerprints all over it. Any “reasonable” person looking over this mountain of evidence against Bonds can only come to one conclusion. To many, just because he hasn't been convicted in a court of law(Yet) does it mean he's any less culpable? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it does it still make a sound? What more proof do some people need? If in the long run, if Bonds comes clean and is found to be clean there are going to be a lot of people rubbing more than egg off their face. If he's got nothing to hide why not submit to a test? He recently tried to halt the authors of 'Game of Shadows' from profiting on sales of the book. Bonds and his attorney claim the grand jury testimony in the book should not have been allowed.. Notice he didn't dispute any of the facts. Throw out the slander and libel suits. That ain't happening either.

One thing. It's clear Bonds is getting creamed in the court of public opinion.

Now baseball is ready to open another investigation. We'll see what comes of that. Baseball had plenty of time to implement a drug policy that had some teeth a long, long, time ago. It makes you wonder how much baseball and all its owners knew about the use of steroids by its players and when they knew it? That's how Congress got involved originally. They told baseball to clean up its act or they would do it for them.

Joe fan doesn't seem to care though. Attendance records are broken every year. After all, guys dig the long ball too.