Manifestosis

Whenever something happens with Barry Bonds, my traffic jumps. Past boons:

• Bonds's mistress in Playboy
• The fate of the 756 ball
• That crank who claimed Bonds's elbow guard had adamantium springs and artificial consciousness.
• Any Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada article.

Kablooey. People come out from their team-specific holes to see what the Giants guys are writing. Is there blind support? Objective analysis? It's a natural instinct to see how the other half lives. There but for the grace of geography go I, and all that.

My problem is that I don't care. Not just about Bonds, but I don't care about any of it. I don't care about Michael Vick. I don't care about Kobe Bryant. I don't care that Joe Namath hit on a journalist, and I don't care that Wade Boggs was diddling someone named "Margo."

I live my life in constant fear. People drive like morons. Yellowstone Park is a big volcano that's going to cover the continental United States with a foot of ash. Maybe my wrists are sore because I have carpel tunnel syndrome, or maybe I have dropsy of the wrists. Scary stuff, this world of ours.

I watch sports to forget all of that. I watch sports to get two or three hour bursts of escape. I don't watch sports for the escape and the off-field soap operatics, as a lot of folks do. The action between the lines - and the suspension of reality that makes that action so, so important in my little world - is all that I care about. How I enjoy sports isn't the Way of Purity. This isn't a holier-than-thou post. It's just an explanation as to why I seldom write about performance-enhancing drugs or DUI arrests or whatever the topic du jour is. To those who were expecting a real post about Bonds's indictment instead of yesterday's slapdash snarkfest: I'm sorry. It's just not me.

Some folks really get a kick out of wasted athletes mugging for the camera with hot non-wives. It's become a little LOLcat-like subculture of the internet sports world. That's great, but I don't care. I miss watching Bonds play baseball. I miss watching Michael Vick play football. That's all. It ticks me off that they each made terrible decisions (of drastically different degrees, of course) because now I don't get to watch them. But there are still games to watch, so I'll survive.

I'm annoyed that KNBR is now your 24-hour source for indictment coverage, but I wouldn't expect anything less. I accept that I'm in the minority. Just know that when I'm trying to choose a topic for my posts, I'll always find this more interesting than this.