Maybe Bradley's life hasn't played out yet quite like O.J. Simpson's or Mike Tyson's or Chris Henry's or Plaxico Burress' or Jayson Williams' or Michael Vick's. To his credit, Bradley has had no criminality attached to his crass behavior or, apparently, no long list of "baby mommas" like Shawn Kemp to eat into his net worth.

That's a comfort of sorts. It's also a reminder that, for all of his temper tantrums, Bradley has escaped what has undone other big-name athletes. Then again, it might just be his dumb luck.

For Bradley has shown he's a hard push from going off sanity's precipice. He's a blood-and-guts example of pent-up madness; he's an emotional volcano that threatens to erupt like Mount St. Helens. He's doesn't need a change of scenery; he needs psychiatric treatment.

What Bradley, 31, doesn't need is a maple or ash bat in his hands and people around him. He proved as much in past seasons and last season. For the Cubs, he went postal, fighting people's efforts to restrain him. His rage, though, was impossible to corral. Much like trying to harness a rattlesnake, you steer clear of it, ever mindful that the rattler can kill at any moment.

The unlicensed shrinks out there cite the absence of a strong male figure in Bradley's life as the reason for his maddening behavior; he's a mommy's boy, they say. Other people claim he's just bipolar, an emotional wreck of man who needs a professional's counsel.

Both might explain who Bradley is. Neither justifies who he is.

On the road to where he is today, Bradley has been offered help for his rage. In Cleveland, the Indians tried everything to get the most out of him. They failed, partly because they're an organization not built to handle talented athletes of color (Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, as examples). They could offer Bradley nothing inside the organization that would shape him into the person they thought he could be.

But let's not discount so easily what the Indians tried to do, even if what they did achieved little. They failed because Bradley wouldn't let them succeed.

Bradley wouldn't let the Athletics succeed or the Padres or the Rangers or ... well, he didn't let any team succeed in keeping his white-hot emotions from spilling over like lava.

The latest to fail was the Cubs, who couldn't get through a full season with Bradley. They had hoped he would be the missing bat in their lineup and a defensive presence in the outfield. He had the potential to do both, of course.

Yet as Bradley did in other Major League stops, he came unglued. An injury slowed him a bit; injuries have often been a problem for Milton Bradley. He can't do much about that.

What he can and didn't do was make the best of the times when he wasn't on the disabled list. He could have played with hustle, focusing his mind on becoming the best ballplayer he can be; he could have remained level-headed, putting his mental demons in cold storage.

Those are things Milton Bradley didn't do; those are things Milton Bradley has never done -- not in Cleveland, not in Chicago, not in San Diego, not in Oakland or anywhere else he's played.

He won't do so in Seattle either, now that the Cubs have sent him there. No one with the Mariners should expect Bradley to, and nor should they rely on him for much -- not for $1 million a year, $9 million, $13 million or $13.

What the Mariners and their fans can count on is more controversy, the kind that threatens to hurt Bradley as much as it will hurt the team; for he's one emotional blowup away from making a headline people don't want to read. They've read that headline too often: the athlete whose life careens out of control with no one stepping in to put it on course.