Several folks, including Billy Beck [1], and a pile more at Memeorandum, have noted thet Barry Bonds was indicted in that BALCO thing. Chicoer.com: [2]
SAN FRANCISCO—Barry Bonds, baseball’s home run king, was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice Thursday and could face prison instead of the Hall of Fame for telling a federal grand jury he did not knowingly use performance-enhancing drugs.The indictment, culminating a four-year investigation into steroid use by elite athletes, charged Bonds with four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. If convicted, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison.
The guy’s guilty as sin, but he’ll never see a day of jailtime. Meanwhile, MLB will ignore this mess, and will sink further into the sewer.
Billy in particular was on point last August when he labeled the whole thing despicable. [3]
It’s as I said back in March [4]; baseball will never recover its full glory so long as people like him are involved with the game. MLB finds itself in what can only be described as an untenable situation. They can’t ignore that the numbers being broken, and yet they can’t be acknowledging that Aarons’ numbers are being broken by a syringe, not by talent. That said, I have no sympathy for them; this is a problem of their own making. Thing is, I wonder if they understand just what the situation is costing them, both in terms of dollars, and in terms of fans. Young fans, particularly, which, after all, are the future of the game.
Here’s a guy who even without the drugs, is approximately as popular as the parking spot next to the honey dumper. About half of this is anger over what he’s done to the game, and the other half is his personality, or lack thereof.
Even with personality issues aside, what can be said about the validity of the record that will stand after he succeeds in getting past Hank Aaron? The only reason he’s managed to get as far as he has, is because of his chemistry set.
And I’m willing to bet, that he considers this kind of talk persecution of him. I’m even willing to bet that there are those who will read this, who will consider my comments racist. (Ignoring, of course, that Hank Aaron is Black too. )
Here it is, gang; Baseball heroes, are such because they manage to outperform everyone else, while still following the rules. Bonds simply doesn’t qualify.
Think, now; Do you know of two sober people on the face of the planet who think Bonds actually followed the rules to get himself this far? I don’t.
And the thing is MLB knew about this all along… they HAD to. But because of the quick money involved, they say nothing, by claiming they have to wait for the government to take action. (And I wonder if this is a point Billy’s picked up on) They’re using government as a shield, here, or they were. I think I could get a whole column out of that.
I suppose and expect we’ll see MLB stepping up and making lots of surprised and angry noises about all of this. But we both know they knew about Bonds, and did nothing. The issue now is what the fans will do. The ones hat are left, that is.