Thomas-Bonds package? Perfect distraction for Hank's Yanks

Does this reduce Thomas and Bonds to mere decoys? Well, yes, but at this point they both need jobs and might be willing to take the money and lounge. Is this beneath their dignities? Only they can answer that, but as regards Thomas, the possibility of $10 million pretty much means that dignity can go hang.

And is this just the fantasy of a low-rent provocateur who sees so few other places such a thing could work? Yes. I mean, the San Francisco Chronicle's estimable Scott Ostler suggested the Bonds-Hurt thing to the A's, and assistant general manager David Forst seemed less than bubbly about it, so we know that a small-budget team isn't the way to go.

No, an idea this potentially hilarious can only work in one place, for one guy, and the trick is in finding something that would make handling all that damp dynamite worth the trouble. And that something is Joba Chamberlain's peace of mind.

Now maybe Chamberlain should be starting; people have mentioned it incessantly, after all, usually after a Mike Mussina start. And getting Bonds and Thomas doesn't preclude Chamberlain starting. But this way, Chamberlain can begin his career in the rotation in relative peace, at least on a Yankee scale, and who wouldn't want that?

I mean, other than Hank, obviously?

Anyway, it's just an idea. A wild, implausible, potentially stupid idea, we grant you, and one that would do more harm to the Yankees than good. But these are wildly creative times in baseball -- statistics are being reinvented and reinterpreted, pitchers are batting eighth, interactive is the new buzzword, and the honeymoon for the new stadium in Washington lasted one day, a new record.

And when you're looking for a nutty idea and the voice to give it life, the best place to look these days is beneath Hank Steinbrenner's four-buck prison-guard haircut. It's hard to know what's in there at any given moment, but if you wait long enough, he'll share. And now that we have put the Bonds-Thomas bug in there ... well, let's see how long it takes for him to concoct either a vehement denial, or an assertion of interest.

Because either way, it would take his febrile mind off Joba Chamberlain, and what sensible Yankee fan wouldn't see the wisdom in that?

Oh, all of them? Yeah, that's what we thought.