I feel badly for Milton Bradley. Really, I do. I have written that before. If not on this blog, certainly in a print publication

The guy is a little too honest, a little too direct, too easily frustrated and intellectually incapable of toeing the party line. And that has caused him no end of problems.

The Chicago Cubs, Bradley’s current team, have sent him home for the rest of the season. And those of us who have followed his career can hardly say we’re surprised.

Milton is not a bad guy.  I’m fairly sure of that, and I was involved in several conversations with him when he was with the Dodgers, 2004-2005. No worse than the average big-leaguer, anyway, and smarter than most.

What separates him from the rest of the guys in the clubhouse is his inability to keep his frustrations to himself. If he is unhappy or angry or feels wronged … he eventually is going to tell someone who writes for a newspaper. Or worse, a guy who is a baseball umpire.

(And it is a weird, guilty thing to be on the receiving end of a Bradley outburst, because you know you’ve got a good story that is going to cause the source outsized problems because he lacks the filters that tell him, “Hey, stop; you’re getting yourself in trouble.”)

It’s odd, but it’s only been the past few years that it has occurred to me that the politics of baseball (well, pro sports, in general, but especially baseball) call for a player to bite his tongue. To lie. A lot. To say he is happy with all is teammates, has no problem with being traded, to express confidence in a club that has just sent him to the minor leagues, or taken him out of the starting lineup or asked him to make a position change. And that the blown call the ump just made is OK because we all miss a few calls, right?

Yes, contracts in baseball are guaranteed, but does that make up for the fact that teams can trade you whenever the mood strikes them? Putting you in a different city in the middle of a season, and leaving your family somewhere else? And if you concede to being stunned or unhappy, or you wonder if the umpires are maybe out to get you (and maybe you’re not really paranoid, they are out to get you) … then you’re a bad guy. A troublemaker.

Now, yes, Milton Bradley is pretty much at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to saying what he feels — even if it hurts him and his career.

And, in Chicago, he has noticed that fans have given him a bad time … that the 2009 Cubs have underachieved … and he was bold enough to suggest that now he understands “why they haven’t won in 100 years.”

Which is honest, and more than a little accurate. But not at all politic. So the club has sent him home for impugning the Cubbies’ fans, etc.  Which also smacks a bit of scapegoating for an underachieving team.

We can fault Milton Bradley for this: Taking the three-year, $30 million contract from the Cubs. He inserted himself into the most intense atmosphere in baseball that isn’t New York or Boston. And someone (his agent, if not his family) should have told him that was a bad idea.

We also can fault the Cubs, who clearly didn’t do much due diligence, almost setting up Bradley to run afoul of Chicago fans by giving him the big contract that was sure to attract negative attention, especially if Bradley started off slowly. And he did.

Milton Bradley needs to be away from the limelight, where he can grouse about fans or not run out this or that pop fly — and no one notices because the press box is two-thirds empty. His indiscretions become one of those “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it …” things.

At least Bradley has reached a point in his career where he knows his own mind, a little.

“I need a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment,” Bradley told a newspaper. “There’s too many people everywhere in your face with a microphone asking the same questions repeatedly.

“Everything is just bashing you. It’s just negativity.”

He’s got that right.

It would be best if the Cubs traded him, but him making $10 million each of the next two seasons will make him difficult to move — unless the Cubs pay a big chunk of that money.

Bradley would be best suited to play for teams like Oakland or Kansas City, Pittsburgh or Denver. He had a decent season with Oakland in 2006, which led to a move to San Diego (and the season that ended when his own manager, Bud Black, tackled him to keep him away from an umpire, and Bradley suffered a season-ending knee injury). He had a career-best season with the Texas Rangers in 2008, hitting 22 homers with an OBP of .436 in 414 at-bats. Which is how he got that big contract with the Cubs, who are shocked, shocked, to find out that he is a bit of a tricky player to handle.

He is useful, when he’s got his mind right. He is a switch-hitting OBP machine with some power who can play adequate defense.

His best chance at a long and lucrative career was when he was with the Dodgers, his hometown team. But he couldn’t quite handle that; the market was just a bit too big, the pressures a bit too high, and his issues with Jeff Kent and fans prompted him to express opinions that ballplayers are not allowed to have … and he’s been wandering ever since.

Former Dodgers general manager Paul DePodesta once famously said he would love to have “nine Milton Bradleys.” That was before DePo really knew what goes on in Bradley’s head; he probably wouldn’t make the same statement, today.

Bradley almost certainly will he remembered as a rebel, an outlaw. Which isn’t what he intended, but that’s what happens when you say what you think inside the game of baseball.