Philadelphia ? As much as Major League Baseball tries to steer attention toward all that is good in the game, the 2007 season will be dominated by a burdensome story angle: Barry Bonds’ pursuit of Hank Aaron’s all-time home-run record.

Bonds is 22 homers away from breaking the record. Ordinarily, baseball would be promoting a quest like this for all it’s worth – celebrating it, honoring the people involved, milking it for every last cent. Not this one, though. Bonds’ alleged involvement with steroids and the belief that his run at the record is tainted has most folks in baseball quietly wishing he would limp off into the sunset.

While Major League Baseball officials privately rue the day they will have to stand on the field and offer fake smiles and hollow applause after Bonds hits his 756th homer, it would seem that on the surface there is little they can do to stop his pursuit other than to pray he awakens one day soon and decides it’s time to go. Fat chance.

During the last few days, though, there has been news about Bonds that makes you wonder whether there actually is a way baseball can run Bonds off before he passes Aaron.

Bonds reportedly tested positive for amphetamines last season, the first in which they became a banned substance in baseball.

In some ways, this is really an unremarkable event. Amphetamines have been in baseball clubhouses for decades, as much a part of the game as pine tar on a bat handle.

That didn’t make it right, though. In recent years, team doctors expressed concerns over the use of greenies to the commissioner’s office, which was able to ride the move to rid the game of steroids and get the players’ association to agree to include amphetamines on the list of banned substances.

You can bet the kids’ tuition money that a bunch of players rolled the dice and occasionally popped a greenie last season. Some surely got away with it. Others surely were nailed. Under baseball rule, first-time offenders remained anonymous and were subject to more frequent testing and a counseling and education program.

It’s just too strange and coincidental that in the first year of testing for amphetamines, only one violating player’s name became public and that player happens to be the most controversial in the sport.

Selig told reporters that he had no idea how the information on Bonds became public.

The Giants’ organization, too, claimed it did not know where the information came from. The Giants were not notified of Bonds’ positive test, but the slugger reportedly disclosed it to teammates.

Regardless of where the leak originated, the timing of it is noteworthy. Bonds agreed to a one-year, $16 million contract with the Giants (the only team that wanted him) in December, but the deal is still unsigned as the two sides work out language involving how much of Bonds’ entourage is allowed in the clubhouse. Could the new information on Bonds scuttle the unfinished deal, leaving Bonds with nowhere to play in ’07? Could that have been the intent of the leak, wherever it came from? Or is someone just trying to antagonize Bonds into saying he’s had enough and walking away? You have to wonder.

It’s just too strange that after the first year baseball has tested for amphetamines, we only know of one player who got caught and that player is someone a lot of people would like to see go away. At a time when Major League Baseball would ordinarily begin hyping a record quest like this, more dirt is coming out.