If you live long enough, and pay some attention to the news and even to people around you … you realize that few of us are completely normal. Actually, 100 percent normality is so rare as to be massively abnormal.

Most of us have moments when we make decisions, say things, act out … that fall outside the definition of “normal.”

Our great good fortune, in terms of fame/infamy … is that most of us are not being closely examined by tens of thousands of people deeply interested in our everyday activities. We are allowed to lead lives of quiet desperation, and perhaps only a few family members or close friends notice when we get off the rails a little. Or a lot.

Others are not so fortunate. Stars. Celebrities. Whose every erratic movement become fodder for public discussion.

Which brings us back to Milton Bradley, Seattle Mariners outfielder.

I saw Milton Bradley play for two seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2004-05. A short stretch of time, in sports history. But something about him left an indelible impression on me, because I keep coming back to write about him.

The nub of the Milton Bradley Story is this: Guy with significant athletic talent can’t get a grip — and keep it. And it is destroying what might have been a long and productive baseball career.

All you have to do is look at the movement in his professional career. Eight franchises in 10 seasons. You don’t even have to know him or to watch him to parse that: Good enough to want, not stable enough to keep.

Mixed in there are periods of competence. Excellence. The first season in Los Angeles,  when he played a nice center field and hit for power and became a fan favorite. The 2008 season in Texas, when he led the major leagues in onbase percentage and hit 22 home runs in only 414 at-bats.

It was that latter season that netted him a three-year, $30 million contract with the Cubs, a contract that quickly became a millstone for him in Chicago, where his rocky performance on an underachieving team brought him the kind of attention his history shows he is unlikely to be able to stand. Which I noted and wrote about on this blog entry in April of 2009. In that post, I did a fairly thorough roundup of his major issues on and off the field. It makes for a long list.

Now, we have Milton Bradley experiencing a meltdown of some sort in Seattle and asking the team for help with “emotional stress.”

He was placed on the “restricted list” today, which means he can’t play for at least five days. And it looks as if it will be a longer stretch than that.

Where are we at, with Milton Bradley circa 2010?

–We may finally get at the root of his issues. In the past, teams and the player have circled around “his issues.” Anger-management courses here, suspensions there. Meanwhile, Bradley has blamed just about everyone and everything that isn’t him. Nothing gets solved, and he moves on to his next team. It doesn’t take vivid imagination to assume he has some mental health diagnosis coming up,  one that perhaps could have been made years ago.

–Have to give the Mariners credit for backing him up. That hasn’t always been the case in the past. Milton acted out, and he was shown the door. This team seems to be sticking with him, at least for now.

–Eventually, however, baseball is a results-oriented game. It is less kind,  less patient than many of the industries/professions for which we work. Fans don’t really want to know about your tough childhood or your perceived slights. They want to see you in the lineup every day, producing, because eventually it is the people who are buying tickets who are paying your salary. The Mariners can’t afford to carry around a guy who is being paid $11 million this year … and not producing numbers worthy of that salary.

(And, note: Bradley is not the first guy known for being erratic with whom they have had to deal this season. Eric Byrnes was struggling with the game and perhaps some other issues as well when the Mariners cut him, this week — and Byrnes now says he intends to play slowpitch softball.)

Where does this end up?

Milton Bradley certainly is intelligent enough to know, rationally, that if he can just play baseball he could extend a career that has brought him more than $30 million in the past six years. That he is not able to hold it together when teams are eager to lavish money on him … tells us he has issues.

But even in these slightly more enlightened times,  when it comes to mental health issues (see: Zack Greinke, Kansas City Royals), baseball teams come back to this: Can you produce? Can you help the team? Or are you a distraction, a drag … one that prevents a team from winning? The Seattle Mariners have to be asking themselves that question, and even if they like Milton Bradley and hope he finds peace in his life, does it mean he remains in their clubhouse? Perhaps not.

At age 32, Milton Bradley may be about out of chances, when it comes to baseball. But if he can get handle his issues, via medication or analysis — or by just getting out of the public eye — it might be worth it.