Baseball season has started again, and I can't tell you how excited I am for these early April games, which always seem to have such a huge impact on how the actual season finishes. Seriously though, it's the first week, and no matter how many hysterical "15 Unbelievable Surprises!!" columns that Jayson Stark writes on ESPN.com, nothing that happens now, other than absolutely catastrophic injuries, really matters. Last year, the Dodgers started 12-2, while the Braves started 8-8. Guess which team made the postseason and which had 91 losses. Sorry, Tigers, Brewers and Mets, you won't be winning your divisions; that's what Atlanta, the White Sox and the Cardinals do. But that really isn't enough to fill a 750-word column, so I guess I have to find something else to say.
So let's talk about Barry Bonds. The slugger, who has seen accusations of steroid use from everyone who has watched any baseball in the past eight years, is now living in his own, Michael Jackson-esque fantasy world. His reality show, "Bonds on Bonds," which debuted on ESPN this April, is a masterpiece of self-delusion, arrogance and melodrama. Some critics worried that the show would give Bonds a chance to rehabilitate his image, but really, there's absolutely no chance of that. When Bonds broke into tears at the end of the first episode, railing against those who are "...happy to go out of their way to try to destroy me," it was all I could do to prevent myself from breaking into semi-hysterical peals of laughter. "You can't hurt me any more than you've already hurt me," he continued, saying, "...I'm going to take it because there's so many people who depend on me." Yeah Barry, steak-head gym-rat steroid distributors and bovine-hormone manufacturers around the country are counting on your strength! Don't let us down. The cherry on top of this ridiculous delusion is the fact that Barry tweaked his knee watching a ball. The small adjustment he made in his stance while not swinging at the pitch was enough to somehow injure his knee. I think Barry might actually be showing some self control this time; he probably blames the sports media for his knee injury, considering he credits them with creating every other problem in his life, and I'd guess he's just trying to be a nice guy and give them a break. Obviously, though, the injury couldn't have been steroid related. Freakishly accelerated muscle growth is supposed to be good for joints and tendons, right?
Moving on to another seriously enhanced baseball personality, let's talk Anna Benson, the spotlight-hogging wife of Orioles pitcher Kris. I could write an entire column where I just listed the crazy things that she's done, but I'll try to give a quick highlight reel. She's posed in FHM magazine and Penthouse, she accused her husband's former Mets teammates of being unpatriotic and played professional poker under the stage name "Gold-digger" (she was thrown out of a Vegas tournament after getting drunk and berating her table with profanities and slurs). This is a woman whose Wikipedia profile lists "She likes to have sex" under the trivia section. There really are two events that take the crazy cake, however. She once picked a fight with James Brady, the 65-year-old paralyzed namesake of the gun-control Brady Bill, saying that it was because of people like James Brady that she couldn't be the "pistol-packing mama" that she wanted to be. Also, she told New York media that if Kris ever cheated on her, she would sleep with every one of his teammates, as well as the grounds crew. So why am I telling you this? Well, two weeks ago, she filed for divorce, citing a marriage that was "irretrievably broken." Turns out Kris cheated on her! Showing an unfortunate lack of follow-through, instead of going on a wild sex binge, she decided to reconcile two days later, surely disappointing former Benson teammate Rafael Palmeiro, whose Viagra has gone untouched since his steroid controversy of 2005.
A quick review: Barry Bonds is crazy, Anna Benson's crazier and this season is probably going to turn out just like every other: the teams that spend lots of money won't suck (except for the Mets) and the teams that don't will (except for the A's). Now, I need to go find a summer internship with the Baltimore Orioles. You know, just in case.
