Bonds fiasco just the latest tragicomedy

CHICAGO — I keep coming back to the two dopes who fought over Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run ball a few years back.

You might remember them. They’re the two guys who pawed at each other, elbowed each other and all but violated each other in pursuit of the historic baseball as it rolled around the stands in Pac Bell Park. They did this while fending off a group of similar-minded idiots.

One of them came out of the scrum with the prize, the other one sued and we watched a quintessential American story play itself out. The only thing missing was somebody turning it into a reality show. A judge ordered the men to split the $450,000 in proceeds from the sale of the ball, but most of the money ended up going to lawyers and expenses.

The tragicomedy has become even better now that Bonds has admitted to a federal grand jury that he has taken steroids, although he insisted he did so unknowingly. He said the substances he received from his personal trainer were a nutritional-supplement flaxseed oil and a pain-relieving balm.

If somebody gave heroin to Bonds, you can be pretty sure he would say it was a chocolate sundae.

Anyway, back to our zeroes. If you’re keeping score at home, the two men embarrassed themselves nationally for a ball that earned them almost no money and might end up being based on a chemical lie.

A worthless ball. Priceless.

I keep coming back to the man who paid $450,000 for Bonds’ 73rd home run. He thought he was sitting on a gold mine when, in fact, he was standing on a pile of cow droppings. The buyer, Todd McFarlane, also bought Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball for $3.2 million. Now that Bonds and Jason Giambi reportedly have admitted taking steroids, McGwire’s accomplishment also has a dark cloud over it, fair or not.

I keep coming back to baseball and wondering for how long. Forget the dark cloud. A massive storm front has stalled over the game.

Some day, hundreds of years in the future, people are going to look back on this entire chapter and laugh at us. We are a people who cheat at kids’ games. Grown men are taking drugs and risking their health to hit baseballs farther in order to make more money.

For what purpose and toward what end? Apparently to be able to pay for very nice funerals.

Bonds allegedly told the grand jury he used substances that, unbeknownst to him, were steroids. Right. In this day and age of incredible scrutiny on athletes, somebody hands you a cream and you don’t think to question what’s inside the substance. You slather it on as if it’s SPF 30.

Barry, Adam Sandler would be more believable in “King Lear.”

I keep coming back to all the times Bonds denied using performance-enhancing drugs. “Test me every day,” he said. Such conviction! Such heartfelt feelings! Who were we to question the great man’s morals?

Everything changes now. All the arguments about Bonds’ guilt or innocence are done. The second-best player in the history of the game, behind Babe Ruth, apparently is a cheat. Every other power hitter of the last 10 years, a span when the number of home runs increased dramatically, is under suspicion. Every player who made huge leaps in productivity is under suspicion, even the guy who went from 10 home runs one year to 25 the next.

Look at some of the other players who admitted to the BALCO grand jury that they had used steroids: Benito Santiago, Armando Rios, Bobby Estalella and Jeremy Giambi, Jason’s brother. None of them was a star. The breadth of this scandal could be breathtaking.

Trades will be called off because teams will be reluctant to touch a suspected steroid-user. It will not be a matter of conscience on their part. It will be that they can’t afford the public-relations hit of acquiring a cheater. They can’t afford the possibility of the muscular slugger getting off the juice and showing up in town with the body of an accountant.

If fans ever believed in what Sammy Sosa has accomplished, they won’t now. They see Giambi and Bonds fessing up. They already have seen Sosa’s corked bat. They have seen Sosa transform himself from medium-sized ballplayer to humongous home-run hitter to Shrunken Sammy. Only Oprah has had more body changes.

Everybody’s a suspect now. What a world. What a sad world.