In effort to provide breath of fresh air from non-stop Olympic and Favre coverage, we’ve got an Animal Planet-esque photo essay to remind sports fans that Major League Baseball still plays regular season games this time of year.

Our buddy Kevin, a surviving SF Giants fan, recently paid his respects to Cooperstown and snagged us a few shots of Barry Bonds’ history-murdering No. 756 home run ball.

Aside from a few god awful mock simulations, this is the first I’ve seen of the actual ball on an actual display.

Evidently, Marc Ecko, a fashion designer who bought the ball, didn’t fuck around with Sharpies.

Ecko marked the ball with a “five-pronged asterisk dye-cut into the cowhide, from stitch-to-stitch where `Major League Baseball’ is printed,” according to the NY Daily News.

Obviously not — they’re just really, really good. But as the Olympics kick off in Beijing today, it’s something to ponder, not only about the hoopers, but regarding all Olympic athletes with more ink splurged around than a messy, ugly printer paper jam.

A new study shows that some dopers may be drugging up through tattoo needles, giving athletes some art and bulk at the same time. Tat needles “increase the effect of drugs, meaning athletes can take smaller doses and ‘fly under the radar’ in dope tests.”

Interestingly enough, the man pictured below should have broken a few Olympic world records in multiple events. Pre-Olympic drug testing, however, found that he was on loads of steroids. And in four years, he’ll be really screwed:

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“My TV broke and I said, ‘Damn, I got to get it off the dresser,’ and it was right there.”

– Kirk Radomski, a convicted steroid distributor, on finding a Roger Clemens’ shipping receipt for HGH under his old television. [Story]

In a celebrity boxing match this weekend, former MLB player Jose Canseco got knocked down twice by former NFL running back Via Sikahema. Check that, he got kocked the fuck out!

In just a minute and 37 seconds into the match he was done. Stick a fork in him.

steroids suck, Canseco. You should find the dude who put the needle in your butt and beat attempt to beat his ass. You know, after you recover and all.

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The NBA advertising dept. earned some street credit this year in the remake department:

As the Roger Clemens smear campaign keeps getting uglier, at what point in time does an artificial boost in confidence cum into play?

Common now, let’s just leave out all sexual puns between baseball and sex on this one — Clemens took Viagra, according to the New York Daily News.

Oh screw that.

The timeline of the Rocket’s crash-and-burn sexual exposure certainly ties together with the logistics of taking the Blue Pill.

Maybe the guy just wanted the sexual drive of a 15-year-old? (Or, at least, match one).

Maybe Clemens just wanted to throw his wood as hard as he could back in 2000, back when he was 37 years old — a time when screwing John Daley’s ex wife came natural (literally).

Or quite possibly, he just needed to compensate for those shrinking balls.