OPINION

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 7:32 p.m. ET Feb. 27, 2008

Roger Clemens was in Florida, acting as if nothing ever happened and telling reporters to get a life just as his took an ominous turn for the worse. He wanted to play pitch and catch, and apparently the Houston Astros didn’t have the guts to tell him to stay home.

Barry Bonds would have loved to be there with him, but apparently Bonds isn’t going to be invited to this party. Too bad, because the two could have chatted in the warm sun about the kind of things baseball players talk about these days — bad needles, good lawyers, and prisons with the best cells.

They’ve spent most of their adult lives getting paid big money to play a child’s game, and now they’re caught in a game more serious than either seems to comprehend. That’s not hard to imagine because, before the feds came hunting, their biggest worries were where to eat after the game and whether the hotel suite had a flat panel TV.

Now, one of the greatest hitters ever faces the prospect of his post-baseball life beginning in a uniform of a different kind. In a bizarre turn of events, one of the greatest pitchers ever may be facing the same thing.

Both undone by massive egos they couldn’t control.

Clemens’ was on display again Wednesday when he arrived as the Astros’ camp to pitch batting practice and give some pitching tips to the team’s minor leaguers. Not only did he manage to get there on the first day baseball’s exhibition season opened, but on the same day that Congress asked the attorney general to see if he should face perjury charges.

Bonds’ was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t his doing. He would like nothing better than to play while his own court case moves forward, but so far his agent is having trouble finding a team willing to take a chance on a moody 43-year-old who doesn’t have a record to chase anymore.

By now, you would think some desperate team would have tried to sign Bonds, who did manage to hit 28 home runs last year and got on base half the time he went up to the plate. Those numbers are surely better than most designated hitters in the American League will put up this season, and imagine what Bonds might do well rested in cozy ballparks where the ball travels a lot better than it did in San Francisco.

Nobody seems to want him, though it probably has more to do with his clubhouse behavior than his legal problems. If teams were really concerned about performance-enhancing drugs, players like Eric Gagne and Paul Lo Duca wouldn’t be making millions of dollars from new teams this season.

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