Hurd By The Bay

Time was, I loved pretty much everything about Brett Favre.

I loved that he played with the enthusiasm of an 8-year-old just turned loose at a carnival. I loved that he ripped off his helmet in a Super Bowl. I loved that the city (Green Bay) and team (Packers) for which he played gave me an alternative to the now-too-embarrassing-for-words Raiders squad that I'd followed since childhood.

Now? In the aftermath of the two-year, $25 million contract he's signed with the Minnesota Vikings to be their starting quarterback sans any real preparation?

The love is gone.

Initially, this was going to be a get-to-know-me blog. As my first entry, I wanted to fill you in on some of the things that you can't find on the back of a baseball card. In the blogosphere, it seems, the life of the blogger is just as (if not more so sometimes) important as what it is he or she is blogging about.

Therefore, you would've found out quite a bit about how I spent many a summer in baseball clubhouses and a good portion of my career chronicling the feats of baseball's home run champ. Spend time doing that, and you can spot arrogance as easily as Favre once found open receivers.

And let me tell you, here are six words I never thought I'd write: Brett Favre has become Barry Bonds.

OK, perhaps not in the way you might think. Favre, to judge by his press conference, is still courteous and polite (Bonds rarely was) and he still seems to care an awful lot about what people think (Bonds never did).

That said, only a man with an ego the size of The Home Run King* could think that waltzing into training camp late to become the main man on a squad that entertains Super Bowl hopes would go over smoothly.

Truth of the matter, Favre just gave his new Vikings teammates a lesson in how to be Bonds without actually being him.

Abide by your own set of rules (check). Tick off guys who are fighting the same struggle you are (check). Be completely clueless about it (check).

It's been more than a decade since I've covered an NFL training camp or any other football for that matter. But I've been around it at all levels during my life to realize that the early days in heat are as close to emulating combat conditions as you can get in our civilized life. The bonding that goes on is essential to the life of any successful team, and the really great ones form a unity that's hard to describe. Much of this is built when it's 110 degrees, and the body is being pushed in ways it never could have imagined.

Favre simply wants to skip that part of it (most of it anyway), and thanks to the enablers that are professional sports executives, he will.

Tell you this: If I'm any other Viking, I'm annoyed if not angry. If I'm Sage Rosenfels or Tavaris Jackson, Minnesota's other two quarterbacks, I'm thinking about tweaking Favre's bad right shoulder when he's asleep. If I'm John Elway or Dan Marino, I'm wondering why my agent never got me this deal.

Anyway, Favre seems to think that this is much ado about nothing. He told a press gathering that "he'd like to think" that he's proven beyond a doubt that he's a "leader" and a "great teammate." If being a great teammate equates to being manipulative, putting one's self on a pedestal and giving plenty of unnamed teammates a reason to bitch (remember the Jets experience?), then he's succeeded.

But when it comes to inspiring love, Mr. Bonds may have a better shot these days.