Mike Lopresti: One more drug accusation for Bonds

Plop. How can a guy with only two feet have so many shoes drop?

Here's another report on Barry Bonds you can choose to believe or not. Amphetamines, this time. If half this stuff is true, there isn't a pitcher Bonds hasn't hit, or a CVS aisle he hasn't sampled.

Meantime, he's only 22 home runs from passing Hank Aaron. Are the balloons and confetti ready? How about the asterisk?

You'll remember the allegations that Bonds took everything from various steroids to a drug for female infertility.

All a mistake, he reportedly testified. He thought he was taking nutritional supplements and pain relievers. The don't-blame-me strategy, from a noted control freak.

Now comes the charge from the New York Daily News that Bonds allegedly failed a test for amphetamines last summer, and originally pinned it on a teammate, saying he got it from Mark Sweeney's locker.

Is that what they call team chemistry?

So it's a familiar dilemma.

If false, it continues one of the biggest smear campaigns against an athlete in the history of sport. And because the first positive result is supposed to be confidential, there is a disturbing lapse of due process here.

But if true ... well, how to measure the arrogance of the man?

The steroid scandal has kept him front-page news, making him a figure of interest for everyone from federal prosecutors to congressional committees.

The propriety of his pursuit of Aaron's record has come into open and imminent question.

His Hall of Fame chances may be doomed. He might be McGwired when his time comes on the ballot. Bonds has to understand the scrutiny, the controversy, the new testing program.

He has to know he was Exhibit A in baseball's struggles with performance-enhancing drugs. He has spent enough time avoiding the issue.

And still he reached into the bottle -- no matter whether it was his or Mark Sweeney's or that of the grounds crew -- and helped himself to some greenies?

Now, amphetamines have been as much a part of major league clubhouses as pine tar. They are a very late addition to baseball's testing program. So this would not make Bonds unique.

Just foolish. Or narrow-sighted. Or self-absorbed, as disdainful of common sense as he is of minicams.

Or is it weakness? Maybe we miss that sometimes with a steely, cold, distant star.

Strong enough to send fastballs into the bay, but not enough to rationally and honestly deal with the most important issue of his professional life.

And in one way, he is the perfect representative for a culture in which anything bad is always someone else's fault.

Uncertainty is business as usual in this saga, where it is often impossible to comprehend how the main character ticks.

I am much less intrigued by what goes on inside Barry Bonds' body than what goes on inside his head.

Whatever happened last summer, the San Francisco Giants didn't seem to mind. They have coughed up $16 million (or more) for one more year of Bonds, assuming they ever work out the last details of the contract, which is taking awhile.

For that, they'll get the final assault on Aaron, the filled seats, the accompanying spotlight ... and also a spot at the epicenter of any further Bonds' earthquakes.

One day this coming season, if he stays healthy, Bonds will do a home run trot by Hank Aaron. Baseball will not know whether to laugh or cry. Most onlookers will have mixed feelings, and the entire celebration will come in the shadows.

You want to feel sympathy, but then the next mess spills over the clubhouse carpet.

If the latest news is true, no reason to worry about the shadows. Barry Bonds apparently doesn't. He is seldom shy of adding one more.