I’m not sure of the veracity of the following report from USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. I mean, if we didn’t learn about it from Barry’s website, how can we be sure this is the truth?

“I’m not playing baseball anymore after this,” Bonds told USA TODAY in a wide-ranging telephone interview near his home in Beverly Park, Calif. “The game (isn’t) fun anymore. I’m tired of all of the crap going on. I want to play this year out, hopefully win, and once the season is over, go home and be with my family. Maybe then everybody can just forget about me.”

“I can’t even tell how you may pain pills I am on or how many sleeping pills I’m taking,” Bonds said. “I don’t have a choice. I can’t even run that much anymore. How can I run? I don’t have any cartilage in that knee. I’m bone on bone.

“But I can still hit. I can rake. I can hit a baseball.”4 games last season as he recovered from the knee surgeries and an infection.

Bonds has repeatedly denied knowingly using steroids. He says he passed Major League Baseball’s drug tests last season and will submit to the policy this season, which for the first time includes the ban of amphetamines.

“I’m clean, I’ve always been clean,” Bonds told USA TODAY. “But it never ends. It seems like every reporter from last season to this season has reported and opened up a new can of (expletive). And I haven’t even been to spring training. At least let me get to spring training and (expletive) up before you crucify me.

“Thank you for all of your criticism. Thank you for dogging me. The latest thing is that ESPN says that Barry is still big. They say I didn’t lose weight. Well, you know what? I am still big. I’m fat (6-2, 230 pounds). I can’t do much. I can’t train like I used to. So the weight stays. I’m just not a skinny person, dude, I’m not. I never will be.

“So what (are) they going to say now? Are they going to say, ‘Wow, I guess it can’t be steroids anymore because he didn’t lose all that weight?’ Or are they going to be mad that I’m fat. Come on, which one is it?”

It would be nice to get a comment from Pedro Gomez on this dogging stuff, but cell phone reception inside the dumpster behind Barry’s house is apparently, not very good.