Is "stuff" about to hit the fan?

It just never ends, does it?

Here comes another steroids tidal wave, just as the season reaches Memorial Day, a symbolic date in baseball lore that signals the real start of the pennant races.

But while the crowds continue to flock to the ballpark — commissioner Bud Selig has already confidently predicted yet another season of record attendance — the convergence of off-field events is even more ominous than usual.

For comic relief, there was the Yankees' Jason Giambi offering yet another of his vague apologies, this time for "doing that stuff."

Giambi means well, but let's just call it sincerity with an out clause. The euphemism "stuff" — in place of the real s-word to which he was so obviously referring — will likely be enough to save him from suspension, or even having his contract revoked, in the event that baseball decides to get tough and Giambi is forced to lawyer up.

Yet one can just imagine Yankees executives high-fiving in the boardroom when they read the USA Today interview with Giambi's oddly timed quotes. Once again, they were presented an opportunity to comb through Giambi's cumbersome $120 million contract (which runs through 2008) in search of a way to void it.

It's not likely to come to that, but Giambi, once again, is being made to squirm and wriggle for being one of the few active players who is vaguely willing to kind of sort of almost half-acknowledge his partial culpability for ... well, stuff.

But we can't have that, can we? An attempt at honesty and accountability? Pish tush. Especially not embellished with an admonition to the USA Today reporter that "what we should have done a long time ago was stand up — players, ownership, everybody — and said, 'We made a mistake.' We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward."

Never mind that Giambi is right. To MLB, them's fightin' words. Giambi was summarily summoned for a meeting with Principal Selig, who may or may not find enough grounds in his comments, and whatever Giambi told him in private, to make Giambi the first active player suspended for a steroids violation without a positive drug test.

The union would successfully grieve such a move in a Donald Fehr minute, of course. But as reported by New York Daily News reporter T.J. Quinn (who has emerged as the East Coast, one-man version of the San Francisco Chronicle's Fainaru-Wada and Williams in advancing the steroids story): "Several MLB officials concede that they would probably lose an arbitration battle with the Players Association, but want Selig to force the union to defend a player outed as a longtime steroid user, and who was identified by the Daily News on Wednesday as having failed an amphetamines test last season."

That would make one ponder whether punishing Giambi without a failed test could be a precedent for doing the same to that fellow in San Francisco who is apparently going for some sort of important home-run record.

Come on — you knew we were heading there eventually. This is a column about steroids, isn't it?

Truth is, Giambi is the least of baseball's problems. It has bigger stuff to fry, on at least two counts.

First, of course, are the final stages of Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron, with all the steroids-related echoes and reverberations that come along with it. That's old news, but as Bonds closes in — 10 homers away heading into Saturday — the din will reach a crescendo.

No doubt Selig is looking for any excuse to halt the Bonds pursuit somewhere, anywhere short of his old friend Aaron, and has been for months — years, really.

Yet if there were any grounds for a suspension based on the revelations from the BALCO case, as reported in "Game of Shadows," one would assume Selig would have done so by now. As long as trainer Greg Anderson remains mum — and we should all have friends this loyal — then Bonds appears safe, barring any new revelations or any new MLB strategy.

And second, swirling just off the shore might be the biggest steroids tsunami of them all — the impending testimony of former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski.

Radomski pleaded guilty last month in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to distribution of a controlled substance, but part of his plea agreement was a requirement to cooperate with the steroids commission headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell.

Radomski supposedly supplied performance-enhancing drugs to scores of baseball players — and according to SI.com this week, he told an acquaintance he may be "ready to sing." SI.com further reported that one acquaintance quoted Radomski as telling him, "When you see the list, it's going to blow your mind," and that his testimony could "blow the lid off everything."

Good times. For baseball, this is the never-ending story, and Radomski's testimony, if it lives up to billing (and gets leaked, which seems a good bet), could be the biggest eruption yet. All MLB needs is for more of its superstars, past and present, to get tainted with steroids association.

Seems like the stuff is about to hit the fan.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists