01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 24, 2005

When does an interview turn into a therapy session?

When the subject is Barry Bonds.

It was almost impossible to watch Tuesday afternoon's interview with Bonds and not come away with the sense that we are witnessing the fall of an American sports icon.

His constant references to how tired he is. The inclusion of his son into the mix, because "I'm tired of my kids crying," as though some off-key plea for sympathy. The blaming of the media for his misfortune. His statement that he's done, whatever that's supposed to mean. It all was like an inside look at a therapy session. All that seemed to be missing was a couch and a primal scream.

It all spoke of a man who feels the walls are closing in, like some boxer who has been trying to stay away from the big punches but now finds himself on the ropes with no place to run and no place to hide. It all spoke of a man defeated, worn down by the new realities of his life.

In a perfect world, of course, Bonds' Arizona press conference Tuesday would have been a coronation to the biggest name in the game, a man whose records say is arguably as good as any baseball player who ever lived. In a perfect world, of course, we would all be getting excited for his pursuit of Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.

But this is no longer a perfect world. Not for Barry Bonds, anyway.

His problem with his balky knee, which apparently is going to cost him part of the season. At 40, his advancing baseball age. The steroid question, which now follows him around like some shadow he can't shake. His world a lot more complicated than whether opposing teams will pitch to him.

This is now the reality Bonds lives in, complete with saying Tuesday that the media has finally brought him down, a scene out of some timeless piece of literature. Or if Shakespeare were a sports writer, he would have been all over Tuesday's press conference, the public fall of a sports icon.

Maybe it's inevitable.

Yes, Bonds has lived in the fishbowl for a long time now, but always on his own terms. In a sense, this was an article of his faith. It was him against the world. Or at least him against the media. You could see that all the time, the antagonism that's always been there, the antagonism that's always been part of the story, right there with his power and baseballs landing in the waters of McCovey Cove.

Tuesday was different. The antagonism was still there, but now it came couched within the painful realization that he now lives in a world he can't control anymore. The grand jury investigation that continues in the Bay Area over the BALCO mess. The supposed grand jury statement from a former girlfriend that Bonds told her several years ago he used steroids, a statement that could mean Bonds perjured himself before a grand jury. All this in the aftermath of last week's Congressional hearings into steroids in baseball.

Each one is a body blow to Bonds' image.

Each one is more chipping away at the public persona Bonds has created for himself.

Some of this might be avoided if Bonds had a certain reservoir of good will. He does not. We reap what we sow? Bonds now reaps years of feuding with the media, years of believing he could be abrasive and condescending and none of it was ever going to matter as long as he kept going yard. So he is more and more out on the end of some public plank, all by himself.

But it's more than just the media that have ground Bonds down, even if he doesn't want to admit it.

A whole lot more.

Steroids is the issue that won't go away, baseball's biggest scandal in 86 years, and Bonds is right in the middle of the storm. His prodigious home runs. His assault on baseball's most sacred records. His body, which has dramatically changed as he's gotten older. His admission that he took a clear substance and a cream that supposedly are designer steroids, even if he says he didn't know what they were. His role in the BALCO investigation.

You don't have to be a detective to know that all the arrows lead in the same direction.

Yet all this is beyond words now, beyond press conferences, beyond spin. Bonds has become the centerpiece of a story that's taken on a life of its own. One that's not going to go away, no matter how much he wants it to.

But his attempt to portray himself as a victim doesn't fly.

This is not the media's fault. This is not anyone else's fault.

This is the world Bonds has created for himself, a labyrinth of hubris and arrogance, of deceit and a belief that as long as he continued to blast the ball into McCovey Cove he was somehow immune.

And maybe Barry Bonds ultimately will escape it with his image intact.

But you couldn't think so watching Tuesday's press conference, the day an American sports icon looked tired and defeated and so very mortal. Looked like a man who was in a room with the walls closing in, a room with no exits.