Let’s Not Invest Too Much Time in Bonds

When I heard this week that an upcoming book will chronicle Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use, I fell to my knees in the newsroom and beseeched the heavens: Please, make Barry retire right now.

That prayer, like so many of mine that involve baseball, was not answered. At present, Bonds is cranking it up for another season and clearly within range of breaking the all-time home run record.

I make no bones about it. I don’t want Bonds to break Hank Aaron’s record. I don’t even want him to pass Babe Ruth, whom he trails by only six homers. I’d love it if he were kidnapped by a militant old-timers’ wing of the baseball Hall of Fame and not released until Oct. 1.

But my reasons have less to do with Bonds’ place in the record books than they do with my own selfish interests.

I just want to enjoy the baseball season.

Is that so wrong? Over the winter, a guy puts up with the NFL, the NBA and the NHL, knowing that come spring, baseball returns. Unless it’s on strike.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to trot out the old “rebirth” metaphor that accompanies each new major league season. How winter’s barren landscape of despair is replaced by the green grass of hope. That’s especially tough to do in Southern California, when winter’s barren despair doesn’t keep a guy from fitting in 18 holes whenever he feels like it.

Still, I wait for each new season like a kid waits for a bicycle he knows he’s going to get for his birthday. The anticipation is great; the bike is even greater.

And now this.

Now we’re going to have a baseball season dominated by incessant coverage of Bonds’ “assault” on Ruth and Aaron, which means incessant coverage of his alleged steroid use. When I say I look forward to a baseball season, that is not what I’m talking about.

For true baseball fans, this season promises to be a severe drag. The problem, of course, is that Bonds cannot be a one-day story. Or a one-week story. He’s sufficiently behind Aaron that it’ll take him all year to break his record, if he does. That means an entire season of Barry and the ‘Roids.

Yippee. Already I feel like something is being taken away from me. I want to read about the Angels’ young guys and the Dodgers’ revamped lineup. I want to see if the White Sox can put it all together again and whether the Yankees can be kept again from the World Series. Most of all, I want to read and watch my team, the Pirates, as they try to finish about .500 for the first time since 1992.

I fear that it will all be minimized by the Bonds obsession that will define the ’06 season. For fans like me, it’ll be like trying to enjoy a picnic lunch with a gigantic gray storm cloud right above you. You might get the lunch in, but you never really enjoy it.

Given that there’s probably no chance that Bonds will retire, I can think of only one solution.

And here I am, falling to my knees once again, with hands upturned: Please, baseball media, let Barry go.

We all know what he’s done. Anyone who has witnessed Bonds’ body turn into a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float knows. I know you don’t want to spend your summer asking him about steroids, so can’t you all get together and agree not to? Beat him to a journalistic pulp for the rest of the spring training season, but then let it go once April rolls around.

Nothing will be gained by pounding on the guy for six months. Unless the commissioner’s office takes action, why should you have to fight the fight? His homers are in the books, and they aren’t going away. Don’t glorify his chase of Ruth and Aaron, but don’t crucify him every day, either.

Don’t let Bonds force you to blot out our baseball season. Figure out a way to cover him without draping the season in dark crepe.

For those of us with so few sources of joy, don’t take the baseball season away from us.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.