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Bonds blasts Canseco Feb. 22: Giants star calls former slugger's book on steroids "fiction."

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Turned a blind eye toward how some skinny infielder or outfielder who averaged 10 or 12 homers a year suddenly hits 25 or 35 or even 50.

Turned a blind eye to someone like Bonds, who testified to the grand jury that he may have used some illegal substances but he didn't know what he was taking or what he was doing, even though it was supposedly one of his best friends supplying the stuff. Same stuff used by more than a few other ballplayers who have been hauled before the grand jury.

At least Giambi didn't try to play stupid. Bonds is many things, including one of the most talented ballplayers God ever made. What he's not is stupid, which is what made his comment about how children act particularly amusing Tuesday, because it is children who throw their ball through the window and then try to say their hand didn't do it.

"Ball, what ball?'' they say. "Whose ball? My ball? I never even owned a ball.''

It is also only children or long-spoiled athletes, politicians and business executives who so lose sight of reality that they believe everything and anything will just go away. That's what Martha Stewart thought until she went away instead.

That's what Giambi thought when he said he was sorry, but not why or for what. At least he said his testimony in front of the no-longer secret grand jury was the truth. If so, then he used steriods. One guesses that's not what he's sorry about, though.

What Giambi's probably sorry about is getting caught and getting sick, the latter of which might be related to what he was doing in the name of performance enhancement.

Bonds took it one step further. He wants the world to believe he's a victim. He says some of this is a racial thing, this persecution of him and this questioning of all he has done in baseball the past few seasons. Bonds says he's an innocent man falsely accused of taking what he knows not, to do what he knows not, from his friend who he did not ask what he was giving him. If it is a racial thing, though, somebody needs to explain something to Giambi and McGwire, not to mention their parents.

Worst of all, it seems Bonds believes this is just another tempest in a teapot rather than a dirty smear on all the men who set the records he has been breaking. Men who worked as hard as he did and played as hard as he did and possessed as much or nearly as much talent as he did but did not possess access to the high-test tank he keeps saying he never used.

"I look for the day for you guys (the media) to stop being a rerun show and this thing will blow over and everybody will go about their business as though it has," Bonds said in his first public comments on the issue that has dogged his steps for more than a year.

In the same press conference, Bonds even tried to play the innocent child when asked if he thought steroid use was cheating.

"Cheating?'' he asked. "I don't - I don't know what cheating is. ... I don't believe steroids can help you, eye-hand coordination, technically hit a baseball. I just don't believe it and that's just my opinion.''

That is the argument of a child. No one is saying steroids help hand-eye coordination. But if you possess such hand-eye coordination already, as he most certainly did, and you then can take something to make your bat move faster and increase your strength considerably at a time in your life when the opposite normally happens, will not the ball travel farther?

Duh!!!

Yet one can certainly understand why Bonds believes this approach might work because it doesn't differ much from Alderson ("I know NOTHING!"); or La Russa ("I only knew ONE GUY who EVER used this stuff and EVERYBODY knows you can't rely on THAT guy."); or Selig ("We got a GREAT policy and just in the nick of time, too."); or Giambi ("Sorry. Now pay me."). The next time Bonds wants to talk about how children react, he should look at what he had to say this week. And what the rest of baseball has had to say about this whole sordid affair for a year or more.

As for Canseco, might he be exaggerating his claims of rampant steriod abuse in baseball? Certainly. Is he lying about every single thing he wrote in his book, "Juiced"? I doubt it. The problem with these sordid affairs is that the messenger who finally blows the whistle usually isn't the Virgin Mary. More than likely, he's guilty as sin. But that doesn't mean he's lying.

Just like stomping your feet and saying "Let's move on" doesn't mean that's what's going to happen because, unless I miss my guess, somebody's going to flip to save their hide pretty soon if they already haven't. When they do, even the children won't believe what baseball players say any more.