Even Mad Magazine weighs in on Barry

Well, baseball, Barry Bonds and the steroids scandal have officially hit rock bottom.They’ve made the cover of Mad Magazine.

The issue of Mad that just hit the newsstands features a caricature of a blown-up Barry Bonds, with the headline, “What, me Barry?,” a takeoff on the Mad icon Alfred E. Neuman and trademark, “What me Worry?” Mad slogan.

Sticking out of an inflated Bonds all over his body are hypodermic needles, with the sub headline, “We stick it to Baseball’s Giant Fraud.”

Inside are such cartoon features as “Classy ways to celebrate Barry Bonds historic season,” including typically tasteless Mad jokes with accompanying cartoons, such as Bud Selig standing over Bonds with a checkbook, as he is being carted away on a stretcher, with Bonds telling Selig, “Keep that checkbook open, commish. I feel my pancreas going.”

Now, Mad magazine may not have the same cache it used to, back when I was growing up and they published versions that looked like composition notebooks so students could get away with reading them in school. But it is still alive and strong, and getting into the hands of kids whose image of baseball in September will now be that of a clownish, fraudulent business.

Wait, it gets worse. When you open the magazine, there is an open letter — obviously a fake — that is purported to be written by baseball commissioner Cadillac Bud Selig to Mad Magazine readers, where, it says, among other things:

“Baseball is actually in the midst of a golden age unrivaled by any other sport, not counting, of course, pro football, NASCAR, and competitive wiener-eating. Yes, our game has never been more popular in the handful of large markets where the teams can afford to field halfway-watchable players.”

And this excerpt:

“Reports of human growth hormones (HGH) use were particularly upsetting, because it had been my firm belief that in the ’post-steroid era’ the players’ still ox-like physiques were being maintained through strict regimens of squat-thrusts and banana-walnut smoothies.”

And then this one:

“There are 750 great athletes playing major league baseball, although with David Wells and Sidney Ponson still active, some might believe the true number is actually 748. Still, the vast majority of players would never betray the fans’ ’trust,’ unless you consider their ditching their home team at the first possible opportunity to sign obscene contracts with the Yankees, Mets or Red Sox a ’betrayal trust.’”

The letter has what appears to be the Major League Baseball logo on the top, and has a signature that is supposed to be that of Allan H. “Bud” Selig on the bottom.

What is particularly sad about this is this satire isn’t too far from the reaction from Cadillac Bud’s state-of-the-game address to baseball writers at the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh last month.

Maybe George Mitchell should just slap a cover sheet on this issue of Mad and turn it in as his steroid investigative report.

There is more, such as a takeoff of “Casey at the Bat” called “Barry at the Bat” that ends with:

“Oh, somewhere there are athletes with a passion for the truth,

Who play the game with honor, hallowed by our nation’s youth;

And somewhere jocks command respect, of that we have no doubt,

But there’s a little joy in baseball — Barry Bonds has been found out.”

Mad Magazine’s editors did not respond to a chance to talk about why they chose this subject matter now. And baseball? Officials didn’t learn about it until yesterday afternoon. They scrambled to the newsstand to buy a copy — just one more headache in the migraine in this scandal that clearly will take years to overcome, whether it be through a joke or a court affidavit or the next tell-all book.

A second grand jury has been impaneled to go after Bonds in a probe of perjury and tax evasion charges stemming from his testimony in the BALCO grand jury probe, and they are pressuring Bonds’ former trainer Greg Anderson to testify. If he doesn’t, that doesn’t necessarily mean an indictment won’t be coming against Bonds, though it is clear their case is not as strong without Anderson’s testimony. And what should also be apparent, based on Bonds’ refusal to just simply go away quietly, is that he likely will fight any such charge. Which means a trial. Which means nightly jokes and Letterman and Leno.

Then there is the chase for Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Bonds, who has slowed down but not stopped, is just 30 away from 755. As Bonds gets closer, whether he breaks the record or whether Cadillac Bud somehow either puts the brakes on it or refuses to legitimize it, by that point Mad Magazine will be the least of baseball’s problems.

There is one truth, one absolute, about baseball’s steroid scandal that has been consistent. What we know now is as bad as what we will know a year from now — maybe when Mad Magazine does a Mark McGwire Hall of Fame issue.