Barry Bonds, baseball and integrity

Baseball has been very good to Barry Bonds; now Barry Bonds owes something to baseball.

It's too bad that what Major League Baseball is most likely to get is another black eye.

Bonds is at the center of the scandal involving performance-enhancing steroids, and as this year's baseball season gets under way, it is expected that the San Francisco outfielder will pass Babe Ruth as the second-greatest home run hitter of all time.

Strike that. Call him the second-leading home run hitter of all time. There is nothing great about Barry Bonds since it became apparent that he has relied on questionable techniques to achieve his remarkable record-setting pace for much of the last decade. A new book offers a detailed examination of Bonds' supposed drug usage.

At this point, Bonds is an embarrassment to baseball, but no one knows what to do with him - or his records.

"Nothing is more important to me than the integrity of the game of baseball," Commissioner Bud Selig said last month when he announced that George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader from Maine, would lead an investigation into steroid use.

That's fine, but talk is just talk. When all is said and done, somebody has to figure out what to do with the pumped-up records that Bonds and other players acquired while Selig and the rest of Major League Baseball was looking the other way.

One thing is certain - you can't put baseball and integrity in the same sentence anymore without eliciting a chuckle. And if this steroids commission doesn't come up with some real answers soon, baseball will go from a mild chuckle to an outright joke.

The annual rite of spring has begun in Glacier National Park as plows have begun their long march toward Logan Pass.

While the initial snow clearing is a good sign, we must all remember that the final opening of the full length of Going-to-the-Sun Road is still a couple of months away.

The heaviest snowpack since 2002 will provide a challenge for road-clearing efforts. Plus there are the usual factors that affect plowing progress: avalanches, late spring storms and low cloud cover, to name a few.

So patience is the byword for all of us awaiting Sun Road opening.

As always, it will be worth the wait.

It was amusing to read a recent Inter Lake story about a new exhibit at the Museum at Central School.

The museum has a display of local newspapers, and is keeping them updated so that visitors can stay current on what's hot and what's not - in 1906.

The exhibit of newspapers from 100 years ago includes the Kalispell Bee and Flathead Herald-Journal. The editorial content as well as the advertising offers much surprising insight into life in the pioneer days.

And to be honest, we are looking forward to 2007, when the Inter Lake of 100 years ago will be added into the mix. Turns out that by coincidence the museum's extensive collection of newspapers did not include the weekly Inter Lake editions of 1906.

But don't wait till then to enjoy this exhibit. It's a creative addition to the cultural mix in Kalispell.