If you haven't made it over to see The Grady's Ladies Sisterhood website, I highly recommend it. It's the kind of effort that I'd like to see for more of our guys. Maybe something like:

• The Women of Treasure Belisle-land
• Dunn's Honeys (or perhaps Adam's Madams)
• Looking for a One-Night Standridge
• Javy's Red Hotties

If you're a Reds groupies and like the sound of any of those sites, please feel free to run with it. Except for the last one. I might want to hold on to that one.

My crack technical staff is working on something special for the big 3-oh later today, but I wanted to send off a happy birthday wish as soon as it was relevant.

On March 27, the book Game of Shadows, written by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, will hit the shelves everywhere. The book details the extensive steroid use of slugging superstar Barry Bonds since 1998. An excerpt of the book is available on SI.com and will appear in the March 13 issue of Sports Illustrated to hit shelves tomorrow.

This article from Sports Illustrated about the book already gets into plenty of interesting factoids. Did you know, for example, that Bonds' took a women's fertility medication in an effort to spur his natural hormone production? I don't know that anyone's really surprised to be presented with evidence of Bonds' steroid use, but to have it all laid out in graphic detail is a tad overwhelming. So go read it now!

My thoughts on the matter fall into three categories:

1. How will major league baseball deal with this revelation? Bonds is a big fat cheater, after all.
2. How will his reality show deal with this revelation? Could be ratings gold, if they can roll with it.
3. How will Barry Bonds deal with this revelation? Here's a quote from the SI article:

When informed of the book this morning and asked if he was concerned about it, Bonds told a group of reporters gathered around his locker, “Nope. I won't even look at it [the book]. For what? I won't even look at it. There's no need to.” He then walked away.

Apparently he already knows how it ends.

The Reds fell to the mighty Blue Jays today in Dunedin by a score of 6 to 3. Eric Milton got the start, and let's just leave it at that. After a whole off-season of telling ourselves that he's got to be better than last year, it's not psychologically healthy to think too much about today's game. He's still injured, after all.

In other news, a guy that we've all known all off-season can be just as bad as he was last year, Ramón Ortiz, got the start for the Nationals today. He pitched two innings and allowed seven runs. Though his team committed four errors in the 22-12 loss, all seven of his runs were earned.

Feel a little better? Good. Tomorrow Michael Gosling starts for half of the Reds against the Pirates in Sarasota. Marc says that Sean Casey and Joe Randa will both be there. The rest of the team will be led by Dave Williams in the charge against the Twins in Fort Myers. Both games begin at 1:05 p.m.

Our good buddy over at Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke? wrote up a little piece about a story from the post-gazette.com about Casey's prospects for staying in Pittsburgh when free agency rolls around at the end of the year.

Pat thinks it's premature for the Pirates to be considering extending Casey's contract at this point. I say it's moot. A quote like “I'm going to look at the situation this year and see what it holds,” out of Casey is like…I'm not even sure. I've never heard anything like that out of Casey. It's hardly a ringing endorsement, though.

We all know that Casey's an emotional, sensitive guy. He probably doesn't want to get all attached to his new team when he knows he'll probably have to leave again at the end of the year. Maybe, just maybe, he's even starting to get the germ of an idea in his head about going to a team that's actually going to win next year.

Boy, wouldn't that be a change of pace. Maybe the kind of change that will really get Casey going.

Or maybe he'll be crying his goodbyes to the Pirates next September. At least he can always go back to visit his folks.