It’s time for another impression

This golden age is tinged by shades of gray. There is nothing absolute about right and wrong.

Gary Matthews Jr. appreciates shades of gray. On the road, while many players sleep late or hang out at the mall, Matthews visits art museums.

He might be the first guy to sign with the Angels and talk about how excited he is to play within driving distance of the Getty Center. He strolled last season through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Field Museum in Chicago and a Houston exhibition of the works of Haitian American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

He has a fine art guide in the family. His sister, Cherise Smith, is a professor of art history at the University of Texas.

“I always buy him art history books for Christmas,” she said. “He tends to like the fairly traditional stuff, like the Impressionists. I take him to see the more modern stuff.”

If Matthews finds himself on the road with nowhere to go, he can call his sister and get the name of a museum or two.

“They’re great places to unwind,” she said.

Matthews could use a few of those places these days, or so you might think. The Angels had dozens of players in camp this spring, but the spotlight froze on Matthews for weeks, after allegations surfaced that he ordered human growth hormone via the Internet.

He hired lawyers and shut up, as they told him to do. Arte Moreno, the Angels’ owner, told him to speak up.

Two lawyers and 16 days later, he did, in a carefully crafted statement.

“I have never taken HGH,” Matthews said in the statement. “Nobody has accused me of doing so, and no law enforcement authority has said I am a target of any investigation for doing so.”

He has been accused of ordering HGH, based on shipping documents allegedly uncovered in a federal investigation. He has refused to address that accusation.

That is where the matter stands today, to no one’s satisfaction.

Matthews is unhappy the HGH questions did not stop when he issued the statement. Moreno got the statement he wanted, but without the answers he wanted.

Commissioner Bud Selig is handcuffed. He considered suspending Matthews, but no way that would get past an arbitrator, not without an admission of HGH use or a criminal conviction. But Selig can’t say he won’t suspend him, even though prosecutors say they won’t charge Matthews, because of the remote possibility Matthews might have to testify against a supplier and explain those shipping documents.

Angels fans of all ages: Please welcome your new center fielder!

“There were days the process was grinding on him,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “After he made the statement, that was a way of saying enough is enough.

“The way fans react? You’re always going to get catcalls of one sort or another. I think he’s at peace with what happened, and it will all roll off his shoulders.”

Said Matthews: “I was at peace when it started.”

How so?

“This game isn’t everything to me,” he said. “When I was growing up, our parents made us have a life outside baseball. As much as I love the game, it’s still a game. It’s really an escape from the real world.”

You can’t get much more “real world” than lawyers, prosecutors and federal investigators.

“How am I going to teach my son the things my father and grandfather taught me?” Matthews said. “How can I make that impact on my son? That’s what you ponder and worry about.”

If Matthews has other things to worry about, so do the fans, as best we can tell. Shades of gray.

This is the golden age of baseball, Selig says, over and over. It’s hard to argue. Record attendance. Record billions in revenue. A new champion every year this decade.

Fans, broadcasters and corporate sponsors have made their peace with baseball’s steroid age. If performances were enhanced, with steroids and HGH and other substances that might have yet to be detected, the masses loved the results, even if they denounced the methods.

Barry Bonds would be a villain anyway; he feeds off his unpopularity. And, every now and then, something uncomfortable pops up: Should Mark McGwire be in the Hall of Fame? Shades of gray.

So, two days before the season opener, Matthews sat at his locker, shrugging at the question of how he expected Angels fans to greet him after his turbulent spring.

“They’ll cheer like they always do,” he said. “We’re at home. We’ll get cheered. When the team is on the road, we’ll get booed. I don’t expect this to be any different.”

In the first inning of Monday’s opener, he made a leaping catch at the outfield wall, saving one run and maybe two, good for a standing ovation. In the third, he made a beautiful sliding catch, saving two runs and maybe three, good for another standing ovation.

The Angels won. Matthews went home happy, and so did the sellout crowd.