The BELL CURVE:

In all the decades I’ve used professional baseball as my personal shrink, I’ve never been so relieved to see it start as I am this year. I’ll tell you how relieved. Because I couldn’t wait for the first official game, I spent last Saturday night at Anaheim Stadium watching a dreadful exhibition in which the Angels stomped the San Diego Padres, 11-3, — on a football-weather night against an alleged major league team that committed three errors that were charged and a dozen or so that weren’t. I hope, for the sake of the home folks in San Diego, that wasn’t the Padres’ varsity I saw last Saturday.

I finally gave up in the seventh inning when the Padres inserted a pinch runner who was identified on the scoreboard simply as “unknown.” I took this as a signal to leave.

Driving home, I asked myself why I was more needy than usual for a baseball fix. Even in my benumbed frozen state, the answer came clear. I was facing a record level of stress over the next six months that sorely needed the psychiatric couch of baseball.

Stress from what? Well, let’s start and finish with the Democratic party. The possibility of watching it die a lingering death in this election year from self-inflicted wounds is almost unthinkable. Never before in my long life — even in 1932 — has either party offered up a target as fat and vulnerable as the Republicans this year. They have a whole flock of albatross hanging about their necks.

The heaviest, by far, is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, justified on a quicksand of lies and false evidence that has resulted in a growing casualty list of exhausted American troops forced back into combat by the depleted resources of an overtaxed military.

Go from there to an exploding national debt that my great grandchildren will still be paying off. Fold in a multiplicity of such domestic sins as contempt for global warming and reduced taxes for the wealthiest.

Then top it with a candidate who has repeatedly pledged his support to the Bush policies in Iraq, even if it takes 100 years to get it right, despite polls showing that well over half of U.S. citizens want us out of Iraq ASAP.

Given this kind of ammunition, Democrats are loading up and then shooting themselves in the foot. Already, Sen. John McCain is backing off his hard line on Iraq, and the Democrats are too busy slugging it out internally to block his retreat. And there is no indication of leadership arising to stop this self-flagellation, even though it is quite clear that electing an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and a Republican president would be the height of folly.

I am reminded of Will Rogers who, when asked to what organized political party he belonged, responded “I don’t belong to any organized party. I’m a Democrat.” Or of Pogo, who once graced our comic pages with such wisdom as: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

They both had it right, and the Democrats running the party machinery this summer should have both comments pasted to their foreheads before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have a different level of problems. Heading the list is the steadfast marshal we elected to protect us from the black hats in our society who has turned out to be wearing one himself. Former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona will have a chance to explain his color-blindness in court this summer.

There will be plenty of stress for all who elected him in hearing how Carona ran his shop. Of special interest should be the coterie of Carona pals, many without any training in law enforcement, whom he supplied with guns and badges and turned loose on us miscreants.

There will also be little comfort for us in a board of county supervisors who turned over Carona’s job to an assistant with powerful political credentials who is almost guaranteed to carry on Carona’s policies, but, hopefully, not his extracurricular activities.

Providing therapy to counter these continuing issues is a heavy burden for baseball to carry, especially when its luggage is filled with steroids. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and the team owners he serves might well also paste Pogo’s warning on their own foreheads as we go into this new season. But given a choice, I’ll still stick to baseball while admitting I have a blind spot for seeing black hats in the outfield. Or the grandstand.

Finally, here is our latest report from the Great Park Watch, which made recent news twice.

First, the balloon ride was grounded after a monthlong investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Among other sins, the balloon operators were accused of failing to keep enough records on such matters as measurement of clouds and visibility, was remiss on employee training, and lacked an instruction manual. A representative for the park said the deficiencies would be corrected but they just proved that “the balloon had been flying safely.”

Meanwhile, two Irvine City Council members had to sue the Great Park board to get permission to look at résumés from chief executive applicants after they found that the two top choices (both of whom rejected the job) had ties to City Hall.

So the beat goes on. Keep tuned.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.