Slugger Bonds charged with lying
The possibility that federal prosecutors could take down Barry Bonds over grand-jury testimony that he had not knowingly used steroids hovered like a giant storm cloud over Major League Baseball last summer.
It’s why Commissioner Bud Selig never wanted to get too close to the San Francisco Giants outfielder during his pursuit of Hank Aaron’s career home-run record, the most cherished mark in American sports.
Bonds continued to declare his innocence, and prosecutors kept on investigating his testimony from four years ago.
Occasionally, baseball people shuddered and wondered, “What if?”
They don’t have to wonder anymore.
Bonds, 43, was indicted Thursday on four charges of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison. An arraignment has been scheduled for Dec. 7 at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, with a trial unlikely to begin until at least late spring.
“During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes,” the indictment read, before detailing parts of Bonds’ testimony in December 2003, with 19 allegedly perjured statements underlined.
One key question was answered Thursday - until the indictment was unsealed, Bonds never had been revealed to have failed a drug test - but others were posed, such as what to do with his records and legacy if he is convicted.
Michael Rains, Bonds’ attorney, said he spoke briefly with Bonds on Thursday but did not describe his reaction.
“Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture and can’t tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other,” Rains said.
Selig released a statement saying, “While everyone in America is considered innocent until proven guilty, I take this indictment very seriously and will follow its progress closely.”
President Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers, also reacted to the news.
“The president is very disappointed to hear this,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. “As this case is now in the criminal-justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball.”
That Bonds would be accused of using steroids is hardly surprising. His transformation from a lithe leadoff hitter in the 1980s and ’90s to a hulking slugger who destroyed many of the most sacred records in baseball during this decade has long drawn scrutiny, and it was widely known that the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California had been pursuing perjury charges.
However, the timing of the Bonds indictment stunned the baseball world, which until Thursday was more concerned with where Bonds, a free agent after the Giants cut him loose after this season, would be playing in 2008.
It came nearly four years since Bonds’ original grand-jury testimony in the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), a San Francisco-area nutritional-supplements lab, and after months in which there had been no visible evidence of progress in the government’s case.
Hours after the indictment was handed down, a federal judge ordered Greg Anderson, Bonds’ personal trainer and a central figure in the BALCO case, released from prison, where he had been serving for much of the past year for refusing to testify against Bonds. Anderson’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, said his client did not change his mind about testifying.
“Not only has he not changed his mind, he’s more incensed than ever,” Geragos said. “He was misled. The only reason he went into custody was because the government said it could not make its case without his cooperation.”
Still, the government’s case against Bonds “looks pretty strong,” said Wayne Cohen, an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School and past president of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.
“The standard [for guilt] on perjury and obstruction cases is easier to prove than it would be on the underlying steroids case, and all they need are documents and a witness, and the government will be able to make its case.”
Bonds, who has won an unprecedented seven National League Most Valuable Player awards, became baseball’s all-time home-run king three months ago, hitting No. 756 off Washington Nationals pitcher Mike Bacsik to break Aaron’s cherished record.
Although Bonds, his family and teammates, and much of San Francisco reacted with all the emotion one would expect from such a momentous occasion, much of the rest of the country - including Selig, who wavered for months on whether to attend the record-breaking game - reacted with ambivalence or worse, owing largely to Bonds’ attachment to the steroids scandal.
“This is ugly,” former Commissioner Fay Vincent said of Thursday’s news. “But the lesson of history is that baseball can take more severe shots than this. I think the public has pretty well digested that this could happen.”
More storm clouds are gathering, however.
George Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader commissioned in March 2006 to investigate steroids in baseball, wrote in an e-mail Thursday before the Bonds announcement, “The investigatory work has been substantially completed, and I am working on my report which will be issued before the end of the year.” He added, “The report will include both findings and recommendations.”
The repercussions could be more severe than Thursday’s indictment.
“There’s nothing earth-shaking [in the Bonds indictment], other than the sanctity of the home-run record,” said Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency. “What can’t be discounted is what’s coming in the next few weeks in the Mitchell report. That has the potential of being much more troubling for baseball.”
Compiled from The Washington Post, The Associated Press and USA Today.