Maybe It’s Time to Start Pondering the Season

If the federal grand jury is just about done, maybe it would let the boys out to throw the ball around a little.

Nothing too strenuous, though. Right about the time everybody gets loosened up, there’ll be a new steroid policy to vote on. It is expected to pass, but, if nothing else, it ought to be good for a chuckle in the Yankee clubhouse.

Maybe they could knock that out between the long tossin’ and the hittin’ in the cage.

It wasn’t, perhaps, the winter anyone had in mind when the game packed up after a few nights in St. Louis and went home. Baseball pushed more than $1 billion at its free agents, moved a franchise to the nation’s capital ... again ... and paraded the Red Sox around for a few months.

But that won’t begin to tell the story of an off-season spent more on examining the molecular properties of “the cream” and “the clear” than the fiscal habits of “the Boss” and “the Frank.”

Baseball has come to an inevitable place; after the discovery, after the abuse, after the alarm, after the federal investigation, comes the bloodletting.

Now everybody is good and sanctimonious, just in time for spring training and Jose Canseco’s he’s-now-written-one-more-than-he’s-read book tour.

Just last week, Commissioner Bud Selig stood at the entrance of the Globe Theatre at Universal Studios Hollywood, a fresh boutonniere in his lapel, and insisted the previous drug policy was, as he said, “working.”

But, he admitted, not perfect.

Indeed, slightly less than perfect. He’d seen the papers. The home runs were nice, and everybody paid off the summer homes, but the villagers were getting suspicious. For one, some of those guys were growing out of their uniform jerseys, and the groundskeepers needed their infield tarps back.

Selig persisted.

“I’ve been in baseball for 40 years,” he said. “I have never had one owner who said, ‘Let’s perpetuate this thing. We need it.’ That’s just sheer nonsense.”

We’re wondering how many said, “Let’s stop this thing. We don’t need it.”

After giving it some thought, baseball apparently will carry on with its plan to go big with Barry Bonds’ march on Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, and it will have its new steroid policy, and Jason Giambi is still a Yankee, and Canseco will drag Mark McGwire and the rest around for a few months.

But, it’s spring.

Somebody roll out a ball, for heaven’s sake.

As batteries arrive this week in Florida and Arizona, here are some of the prevailing themes:

The ‘Idiots’ Ride Again

A Red Sox championship generally upsets the balance of good and wretched, and baseball never sees it coming.

This spring marks the first since 1919 that the Red Sox possess the World Series banner. And although the Red Sox were a gripping story, there isn’t a flagpole tall enough to raise their flag above a winter of performance-enhancing drug allegations leveled against some of the game’s most accomplished players.

Eighty-six years ago, an otherwise routine spring training became a routine regular season, which became the Black Sox scandal. Shoeless Joe Jackson, pitcher Eddie Cicotte and six others were found to have thrown the 1919 World Series and were banned for life.

The common thread: a banner flapping above Fenway Park. We’re just saying.

Meantime, the Red Sox attempt to become the first team to repeat since the Yankees won three in a row from 1998 to 2000. They’ve lost “idiots” Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Gabe Kapler and Orlando Cabrera, but gained idiot David Wells, and idiots-in-training Edgar Renteria and Matt Clement.

The Curse is gone, replaced by expectations to win again. The Curse might be easier.

Jason Lives

Yankee camp, always a spectacle, has outdone itself.

Beneath the miniature facades on a little patch of green along Tampa’s Dale Mabry Highway, and under the aviator-shaded glare of George Steinbrenner, the Yankees begin the public phase of their recovery.

By now, they’ve had their chins surgically separated from their chests, which still leaves the spiritual mending.

The greatest collapse in postseason history would tend to leave a scar, even for an organization as secure as the Yankees. If that wasn’t enough, slugger Giambi was exposed in news reports and Canseco’s book as a chronic and reckless steroid user, and Gary Sheffield was tied in greater detail to the BALCO scandal.

When the Yankees get around to playing baseball again, they’ll have the pitching staff -- they added Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright -- to return to the postseason, along with the $200-million payroll. The question is, can they survive the circus?

Then again, it’s not all about the Yankees: Darryl Strawberry is in Met camp.

Chasin’ Babe and Hank

Barry Bonds needs 11 home runs to catch Babe Ruth at 714, 52 to catch Hank Aaron at 755.

Last season, Bonds hit 45 home runs in 147 games, a rate of a home run every 3.27 games. But he sat out 15 games, or once every 10.8 games.

Based on all of that, and assuming a similar season, Bonds could tie Ruth during a mid-May series in Colorado and pass Ruth during a series from May 24-26 against the Dodgers in San Francisco.

Or not.

But considering Al Downing and the Dodgers’ role in Aaron’s surpassing Ruth on April 8, 1974, it could only be providence were Bonds to hit No. 715 against some gray-shirted Dodger left-hander.

Bonds, who will turn 41 around midseason, will spend spring recovering from two arthroscopic surgeries, one on each knee, the second to the right one two weeks ago. He also fights chronic back soreness most springs, so damaging last year he went on to win his seventh most-valuable-player award.

There appears to be no end to Bonds’ game, however, so long as there’s plenty of flaxseed oil and arthritic balm around.

He’s Your ... Daddy?

Pedro Martinez created quite a commotion last week, reporting to Port St. Lucie, Fla., a week early and immediately hitting the weights, even if they were the little silver ones at the far left of the dumbbell rack.

It was with some, well, curiosity that Martinez appeared on the back page of one of the New York tabloids. He was captured in full flex, his stringy guns extended over his head, looking quite determined, and he had, well, he apparently had, uh, shaved under his arms. The search for the Lady Bic ensued.

This time of year, it’s all about getting to know your new teammates and their idiosyncrasies. One man’s hygiene is another’s eccentricity.

If Martinez improves on last season’s 16-9 record and 3.90 ERA -- assuming a healthy shoulder, his relocation to the National League almost ensures it -- the Mets wouldn’t care if he plucked his eyebrows and called himself “Babs.”

He won’t be the only high-profile, high-salaried superstar looking for an off-ramp on opening day.

Carlos Beltran is in New York. So are Randy Johnson and Carl Pavano, though on the other side of the Tri- borough Bridge. Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson are in Seattle, Troy Glaus and Shawn Green in Arizona, Carlos Delgado in Florida, Moises Alou in San Francisco, J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent in Los Angeles, David Wells and Edgar Renteria in Boston, Steve Finley and Orlando Cabrera in Anaheim, Tim Hudson in Atlanta, Troy Percival and Magglio Ordonez in Detroit and Mark Mulder in St. Louis.

Pass the hairspray.

Dos Angeles

Two teams in Los Angeles (we’re sure of that now), two 2004 playoff qualifiers (for the first time) and one postseason win (thank you, Jose Lima) brought radical change to the Dodgers and incremental improvement to the Angels.

General Manager Paul DePodesta went for pitching over all else, including, some say, his sanity, leaving the Dodgers short on infield defense and offense. They lost both when Beltre ran off to Seattle, and broke even when Kent signed early in free agency and replaced Alex Cora.

Fans had had it with Green until it came time to trade him, at which point they fell in love again, and loved Finley, at which point the Dodgers passed on him, allowing an opening for ...

The Angels. Their general manager, Bill Stoneman, ever understated, signed Finley and moved Garret Anderson to left field. He all but hailed a cab for Glaus, handing third base to rookie Dallas McPherson, unless Kendry Morales defies all scouting reports and brings a glove.

And Stoneman brought the ninth inning back into play, waving off Percival in favor of talented 23-year-old Francisco Rodriguez, who so loves to pitch he does it year round, no matter what the Angels think.