It’s no secret that the Hall of Fame is plagued with issues. Anyone who keeps up with baseball knows this.
The latest centers around the character clause, an archaic and highly subjective element to the voting process that seems to be keeping Barry Bonds out, though his influence on baseball runs parallel with Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio.
The clause is as follows:
“Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
Bonds’ issue stems from the widely held belief that he used performance enhancing drugs during his career. The same belief that followed Mike Piazza, who was just introduced into the hall Wednesday afternoon.
Bonds’ case was brought to the forefront of America in the age of cable in most American homes, as well as the introduction of digital media as we currently know it.
Piazza’s career stretched through the height of the steroid era, when the science of juicing began to evolve into huge gains. He never tested positive — because he was never tested at all. Ever.
In fact, Piazza’s first big league at bat came in the same full season where steroids were officially banned. Is Piazza a terrific player who had a major impact on the game of baseball?
No question.
Is there any more evidence that Bonds used steroids than with Piazza? No. There is nothing. The FBI tried to prove it. They couldn’t even get him to trial using a grand jury, which can be convened multiple times, and serves as a prosecutors dream due to the lack of rules that a criminal trial must follow.
Nothing.
Baseball tried to prove it. Nobody could. Not a scrap of hard evidence was ever produced, not one single witness or corroboration.
And then there’s the worst, most ridiculous part of the character clause.
Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt and others are all in the hall, even after admitting to using performance enhancing drugs. Ken Caminiti admitted that he won the 1990 National League MVP while shooting up.
The last name was short of the necessary 75 percent of votes and will remain absent from the Hall of Fame forever.
Willie Stargell and Goose Gossage, too. They all were admitted dopers. Yet there has yet to be any serious move to denounce anyone in the hall, to even consider that Mays, or Mickey Mantle, who was accused like Bonds, have their busts put in a warehouse far away from Cooperstown.
If Mays is in, Bonds should be without any hesitation. Ken Griffey Jr.? He should be in also, and he is after a group of voters gave him the highest percentage of confirmations in the history of the process.
There’s just as much evidence that Bonds used needles, creams or any other type of drug as with Griffey.
Let’s be clear on this, too, before getting too deep: I loved watching Griffey when I was a kid. I cherished every second of the rare times I saw him on television, and in 1998, got to see him go heads up with Sammy Sosa in Spring Training.
I can say the same for Bonds, who I met in 2004, the year I graduated high school. My father won an ESPN Fantasy League for the bigillionth time, and that year the prize was to watch a game with Joe Morgan and Chris Berman during a telecast of Wednesday Night Baseball.
We were on the field, Bonds was standing in the third base coaches box, staring off towards McCovey Cove. My dad and I walked up, and the elder rattled off micro-stats that Bonds might not have known — hell, this was before sabermetrics was common, the Giants might not have known these things.
Bonds didn’t even make eye contact. With the utmost level of incomprehensible douchebagerry, he replied:
“Yep.”
That’s who he was. A total prick. But that is no reason to keep him out of the hall — there are plenty of dicks in the world. A group of professionals charged with being objective, cannot deny any of this.
Another thing that should be made clear: I do think Bonds used performance enhancing drugs. I think he used all kinds, from steroids to testosterone, to some with names I wouldn’t even attempt to pronounce.
Do I know for sure? No. Same goes for Jeff Bagwell, Roger Clemens, and every player during that generation, of which I believe about 98 percent used some external formula that is now banned.
Baseball even believed it. Which is why randomized drug testing in the majors is so new. That included Griffey, who hit more home runs in the 1996 and 97 seasons than Mays, Mantle, Johnny Mize, Hank Aaron and almost anyone else in the history of professional ball did in a year.
The list of players who trumped Griffey’s 56 in the mid-90’s. and didn’t play in the steroid era, is short. Jimmie Foxx (1932), Hank Greenberg (1938), Roger Maris (1961), and Babe Ruth (1921, 1927). Four guys have done it outside of the last 30 years.
So why are we assuming that Bonds did it, but not Griffey or Piazza? Because the voting process is stupid, and the voters — many of whom I know — aren’t thinking straight.
And it’s wrong.
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Such a weak cry from who?
No question Bonds overused peds. To compare what he did to what was available to players in the 50’s and 60’s is totally off base. I do NOT disagree that Piazza had similar issues to Bonds, but was never caught. I wouldn’t be unhappy if he had not been voted in. But one mistake doesn’t mean we should make more. That’s the philosophy that demeaned the HOF with Veteran’s committees. “If so and so is in then this guy should be in, when the truth was so and so shouldn’t have been selected in the first place.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Court documents show Barry Bonds tested positive for three types of steroids, and his personal trainer once told his business manager in the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse how he injected the slugger with performance-enhancing drugs “all over the place.”
Prosecutors plan to use those 2000-03 test results and other evidence, detailed in documents released Wednesday, at Bonds’ trial next month to show he lied when he told a federal grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.
Bonds’ attorneys want that evidence suppressed, and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is to hear arguments Thursday on what to allow jurors to hear. Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson, who was jailed several times for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury, appears to be at the heart of the government’s case. But his lawyer, Mark Geragos, said Anderson will again refuse to discuss Bonds if prosecutors call him to testify.
Also among the evidence made public were a positive test for amphetamines in 2006 in a urine sample Bonds gave to Major League Baseball; doping calendars Anderson maintained with the initials “BB” and a handwritten note seized from his house labeled “Barry” that appears to be a laundry list of steroids and planned blood tests; and a list of current and former major leaguers, includingJason Giambi, who are expected to testify at the March 2 trial.
The documents said that Steve Hoskins, Bonds’ childhood friend and personal assistant, secretly tape-recorded a 2003 conversation with Anderson in the Giants’ clubhouse because Hoskins wanted to prove to Bonds’ father, Bobby Bonds, that his son was using steroids.
Bonds, who developed from a gifted and fleet outfielder into thegame’s greatest slugger, hit a single-season record 73 home runs in 2001.
Bonds had said he thought Anderson was giving him flaxseed oil and arthritis balm, not steroids or testosterone.
Bonds had been charged with one count of lying for saying he never knowingly used steroids. On that count, the jurors said they voted, 8-4, for his acquittal. On another charge that dealt with Bonds lying about his alleged use of human growth hormone, the jurors voted, 9-3, for acquittal.
On the final perjury count, they came close to convicting Bonds. He had been charged with lying when he said he never was injected by anyone but his doctor. The panel voted, 11-1, for conviction, but one juror — a 28-year-old nurse from Brentwood, Calif., who would only give her first name, Nyiesha — was a holdout.
The jurors ultimately chose to convict Bonds on obstruction of justice because “he was entirely evasive” in his answers in the grand jury, the jury foreman, Fred Jacob, 56, said.
“He was often dodging the question,” Jacob said. “He would just talk about something else.”
When Bonds was asked before the grand jury if Anderson had ever injected him, Bonds at one point started talking about his relationship with Anderson, a childhood friend, and about his life as a celebrity child of the former Giants star Bobby Bonds.
Bonds, who provided his Balco grand jury testimony more than seven years ago, was first formally charged four years later. On Wednesday, he found himself possibly at the end of a long legal road not far from the Giants’ AT&T Park.
Just two miles away at the courthouse, Bonds’s trial was full of humiliating testimony for him — from former friends, a trainer with the Giants and an ex-mistress. They variously described what prosecutors said was evidence of steroid use: acne, a bad temper and shrunken testicles. Steve Hoskins, Bonds’s former business manager, testified he and Bonds often had conversations about Bonds’s steroid use.
But Anderson, the would-be star witness and the one person who probably knew the truth and details about Bonds’s suspected steroid use, never took the stand. Instead, he went to prison for the fourth time in five years for refusing to testify in the case. After 17 days in prison, he was released last Friday.
The government, though, was undeterred.
“He wanted to tell a little lie in order to conceal a big lie,” Parrella, an assistant United States attorney, said in the government’s closing argument, referring to Bonds’s claim that he was receiving only flaxseed oil and arthritis balm. “The lie is that he had been using steroids for years, and knew exactly what they did.”
Mar 21, 2011 at 1:00a ET
Barry Bonds admits using steroids during his baseball career, his lawyer told a jury Tuesday. The catch is that Bonds’ personal trainer misled him into believing he was taking flax seed oil and arthritis cream.
”I know that doesn’t make a great story,” Allen Ruby said during his opening statement at the home run leader’s perjury trial. ”But that’s what happened.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella called such claims ”ridiculous and unbelievable” and portrayed Bonds as a liar during his first chance to present the government’s position.
And so the crux of the criminal case against Bonds was laid before an eight-woman, four-man jury as the testimony phase of the trial got under way. Bonds has pleaded not guilty to four charges of lying to a grand jury in 2003 when he denied knowingly taking steroids and one count of obstruction.
Parrella started the day by saying Bonds lied to the grand jury even though the government promised not to prosecute him for drug use if he testified truthfully.
”All he had to do was tell the truth, Parrella said. ”That’s all, but he couldn’t do it.”
Parrella tried to show a deep connection between Bonds and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as BALCO, the Burlingame company at the center of an international sports doping ring that the grand jury was investigating. Five men, including BALCO’s founder Victor Conte and Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to steroids distribution after a 2003 government raid on BALCO.
On Tuesday, Parrella displayed a photograph taken from a magazine of Bonds, Conte and Anderson and called the trio the ”Three Musketeers of BALCO,” drawing an objection from Ruby.
Dressed in a dark suit with a light blue shirt, Bonds sat slouched in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles and poking out the other side of the defense table, as he watched Parrella tell jurors that a childhood friend of Bonds will discuss watching him inject steroids.
Piazza – Nothing. Pimples on back. Determined to be pimples on back.
Get a grip. You’re a clown who wrote a sour embarrassing article about the Crown Prince of falsified record breaking. Don’t lump a classy athlete with a normal career arc and historical stats in areas that steroids couldn’t affect with the most well known steroid abuser in MLB history. Shame too. All he had to do was be Barry Bonds the Pittsburgh Pirate and he became the swollen headed, shrunken testicled homerun mashing fre
http://www.barrybondssteroids.net/bondsbeforeandaftersteroids.jpg
1998
Boyhood friends Barry Bonds and Greg Anderson reconnect when Anderson is working as a personal trainer in the Bay Area. Shortly after, Bonds hires Anderson to replace Raymond Farris, who at the time was supervising his workouts.
June 1, 2003
In an article published in “Muscle and Fitness” magazine, Bonds describes his training regimen, as prescribed by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). In the article, Bonds states that in the winter of 2000 BALCO founder Victor Conte and BALCO began measuring the nutrient levels in the outfielder’s blood, then prescribed specific supplemental regimens to correct imbalances. In June of 2004, while answering questions from The Baltimore Sun about his ties to BALCO, Bonds says, “I don’t know BALCO, dude.”
Sept. 3, 2003
Investigators, including IRS agents, raid BALCO Laboratories in Burlingame, Calif., and take financial and medical records.
Sept. 5, 2003
Investigators search the home of Anderson, Bonds’ personal trainer. Investigators seize documents they say showed Bonds was using banned drugs.
Oct. 23, 2003
The grand jury investigation into BALCO begins.
Dec. 4, 2003
Bonds, who had touted Conte and his supplement ZMA in a magazine article, testifies before the federal grand jury. In testimony, Bonds says he received and used “cream” and “clear” substances from Anderson during the 2003 baseball season, but was told they were the nutritional supplement flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm for arthritis.
Dec. 4, 2003
In front of the federal grand jury, Bonds testifies he never paid Anderson for drugs or supplements but acknowledges paying him $15,000 for weight training. … Bonds testifies he asked Anderson to have him tested for steroids because he “lacked trust” with MLB, which started testing players for steroids during the season. Bonds was told by Anderson he was negative. … During his testimony, Bonds also says Anderson brought products into the Giants’ clubhouse at Pac Bell Park “once a homestand,” where he used them. … Bonds testifies to the federal grand jury that he gave Anderson a $20,000 bonus and bought him a ring after the 2001 season, in which he hit 73 home runs. He also bought the trainer a ring to commemorate the Giants’ 2002 World Series appearance. … During his testimony, prosecutors asked Bonds about calendars — seized in a raid on Anderson’s home — that contained his name and notes about performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds replies, “I’ve never had a calendar with him, never had anything.” Bonds could also not explain a calendar with the name “Barry” on it, nor a note indicating an invoice of $450 for blood tests.
Dec. 11, 2003
Gary Sheffield testifies to the federal grand jury that he received a liquid called “the clear,” a massage balm called “the cream” and pills called “red beans” from Anderson.
Feb. 12, 2004
In Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft announces a 42-count indictment against four men in the BALCO case: Conte, BALCO vice president James J. Valente, Anderson and East Bay track coach Remi Korchemny. They are accused of distributing illegal drugs to athletes and money-laundering. Upon arraignment, all four plead not guilty.
Feb. 17, 2004
Anderson tells federal agents he gave steroids to several baseball players.
Feb. 18, 2004
Sheffield is found to have sent packages to BALCO.
Feb. 23, 2004
Bonds denies steroid use and says, “They can test me every day if they choose to.”
Feb. 27, 2004
Two lawyers for Anderson say Bonds was offered steroids but never took them.
March 2, 2004
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bonds, Jason Giambi, Sheffield, Marvin Benard, Benito Santiago, Randy Velarde and Bill Romanowski received steroids from BALCO.
April 8, 2004
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig meets with Bonds in private before the Giants-Padres game in San Diego.
April 25, 2004
Conte’s lawyers acknowledge a government memorandum that says Conte provided steroids to a number of high-profile athletes, but deny that Conte actually admitted to providing steroids to the athletes and specifically that Conte named the athletes. The 27 athletes — five baseball players, seven football players and 15 track athletes — allegedly named include Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Kelli White and Chryste Gaines.
May 4, 2004
Before a game at Shea Stadium, Bonds talks with reporters for 45 minutes, again denying that he used steroids. Some of his quotes: “It [the steroid scandal] doesn’t faze me at all.” “There isn’t anybody investigating me, as far as I know.” “My records aren’t going anywhere. I’ll be fine, trust me.” “He’ll [Greg Anderson] always be a friend of mine. Always. We grew up together.” “Half the stuff I say, I don’t believe.”
June 25, 2004
Bonds angrily denies Tim Montgomery’s leaked testimony that Conte gave Bonds the steroid Winstrol, and threatens to sue Montgomery. Conte’s attorney also denies Montgomery’s story.
Sept. 24, 2004
Bonds is randomly tested for steroids before a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Bonds tells MLB.com, “I’m glad this is finally happening. They’ll get the results and it will clear my name. It’ll show that there’s nothing behind what I’ve been doing [on the field] all year.”
Oct. 11, 2004
Sheffield tells Sports Illustrated he was introduced to BALCO by Bonds, with whom he was training before the 2002 baseball season in California. According to the magazine report, officials at the lab gave the New York Yankees slugger a testosterone-based steroid knows as “the cream” to be applied to a scar on his right knee. Sheffield says he didn’t realize “the cream” was a steroid. Shortly after, Sheffield severed ties with Bonds.
Oct. 16, 2004
Reports surfaced that Bonds’ weight trainer claimed in a conversation that was secretly recorded last year that Bonds was using an “undetectable” performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 baseball season. The voice on the tape, which has been determined by some and disputed by others as that of Anderson, also said he would be tipped off a week or two before Bonds would be subjected to steroid testing.
Oct. 30, 2004
In documents disclosed by the government, James Valente, VP of BALCO, told federal investigators a year earlier that Giants star Barry Bonds tried the company’s new performance-enhancing drugs but didn’t like how one of them made him feel.
Nov. 1, 2004
Conte lashed out at federal investigators, saying federal investigators lied by saying he and Valente confessed to giving drugs to Bonds and other athletes.
Nov. 2, 2004
Reports emerge that Anderson told federal investigators the year before that he had supplied steroids to several members of the San Francisco Giants, but he insisted Bonds was not one of them.
Dec. 2, 2004
According to documents obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Jason Giambi told a federal grand jury that he had injected himself with human growth hormone during the 2003 baseball season and had started using steroids at least two years earlier. Giambi testified Anderson provided him with the drugs.
Dec. 3, 2004
The San Francisco Chronicle reports Bonds admitted receiving “cream” and “clear” substances from his personal trainer during the 2003 baseball season, but denied he knew they were steroids during his testimony Dec. 4, 2003, to a federal grand jury.
March 4, 2005
Without admitting any wrongdoing, Bonds says this about steroids in baseball: “You’re talking about something that wasn’t even illegal at the time. All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever. Man, it’s not like this is the Olympics. We don’t train four years for, like, a 10-second [event]. We go 162 games. You’ve got to come back day after day after day. … There are far worse things like cocaine, heroin and those types of things.”
March 20, 2005
The San Francisco Chronicle reports Kimberly Bell, a graphic artist from San Jose who says she dated Barry Bonds from 1994 to 2003, was subpoenaed by prosecutors in the BALCO case to testify before a San Francisco grand jury the previous week (March 17). Bell was questioned on Bonds’ finances and whether he used steroids. According to the Chronicle, and two sources familiar with the testimony, Bell said Bonds gave her $80,000 to help purchase a house in Scottsdale, Ariz., and admitted to her in 1999 that an elbow injury, in which he had to undergo surgery for a bone spur and torn triceps tendon, was caused by his use of steroids.
March 23, 2005
It is reported in various news outlets that because of the grand jury testimony of Bonds’ former mistress, investigators might look into whether Bonds lied to a grand jury in December 2003 and possibly committed financial crimes as well.
April 8, 2005
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bonds, out with a knee injury, is working out under the supervision of weight trainer Anderson, who is awaiting trial on charges of distributing performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes.
April 25, 2005
Selig asked players to agree to a 50-game suspension for first-time steroid offenders, a 100-game ban for second offenders and a lifetime ban for a third violation. He asked that amphetamines be tested for, that there be more frequent testing and that administration of drug testing be shifted to an independent person from the management-union committee.
July 15, 2005
Conte and Anderson plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids and money laundering. Valente pleads guilty to one count of distributing steroids.
Oct 18, 2005
Conte is sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to distributing steroids. Valente is given three years’ probation and Anderson a three-month prison sentence on similar charges.
March 8, 2006
Sports Illustrated goes on sale with an excerpt from a new book, “Game of Shadows,” by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. The book details use of steroids and other drugs by Barry Bonds in exhaustive detail. This book is written in narrative style and based on more than a thousand pages of documents and interviews with more than 200 people. The book describes how Bonds allegedly turned to steroids after the 1998 season because he was jealous of Mark McGwire. Bonds hit 37 home runs in ’98, when fans and media were captivated by McGwire’s 70 home runs and his duel for the record with Sammy Sosa, who hit 66. The authors allege that by 2001, when Bonds broke McGwire’s single-season home-run record (70) by belting 73, Bonds was using two designer steroids referred to as “the cream” and “the clear,” as well as insulin, human growth hormone, testosterone decanoate (a fast-acting steroid known as Mexican beans) and trenbolone, a steroid created to improve the muscle quality of cattle. The book gives the most extensive alleged details of Bonds’ alleged use of human growth hormone (HGH), for which baseball still does not test.
March 8, 2006
Bonds’ journey into the world of performance-enhancing supplements began in January 1997, when he tried androstenedione for the first time, a man who says he sold it to the slugger told ESPN The Magazine’s Shaun Assael. Stan Antosh, a California biochemist whose Osmo Labs was the first to market andro in the United States, told Assael he gave it to Bonds as part of a wide-ranging supplement regimen that included a dozen vitamins, proteins and amino acids.
March 10, 2006
Former commissioner Fay Vincent and John Dowd, the lawyer who investigated Pete Rose, called on commissioner Bud Selig to hire an outside investigator to research allegations of steroid use by Bonds.
March 15, 2006
ESPN The Magazine publishes an excerpt from a new book “Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero” by Jeff Pearlman. According to the book, Bonds, after the 1998 season, told a small group over dinner at the home of Ken Griffey Jr. that he was going to start using “some hard-core stuff” to increase his hitting power. The book quotes Bonds as saying over dinner, “I had a helluva season last year, and nobody gave a crap. Nobody. As much as I’ve complained about McGwire and Canseco and all of the bull with steroids, I’m tired of fighting it. I turn 35 this year. I’ve got three or four good seasons left, and I wanna get paid. I’m just gonna start using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won’t hurt my body. Then I’ll get out of the game and be done with it.” In a later interview, Griffey said he could not recall having such a conversation with Bonds.
March 16, 2006
MLB commissioner Bud Selig told ESPN’s Jon Miller that he has not yet decided what he will do with the new information on Bonds’ alleged steroid use, including whether he will investigate the allegations. “I will review all the relative material,” Selig told Miller. “I will review everything. I’m considering all of my options. We’ll do what’s best for the sport.” Selig was asked about reports that he was investigating Bonds, then said: “No decision has been made, despite what has been reported out there in the past few days. I’ve given it a lot of thought and attention. I’ll announce my decision at the appropriate time.”
March 17, 2006
Conte tells USA Today that he never gave Bonds steroids. “BALCO did not give him steroids,” Conte said March 16 by phone from Taft (Calif.) Correctional Facility. “I never gave him steroids.” Conte made similar statements in reports from ESPN.com and AP on Dec. 1, 2005.
March 20, 2006
Despite his denials to the contrary, Selig moves ahead with plans to investigate Bonds.
March 22, 2006
Reports surface that Bonds tried to keep his name out of the BALCO scandal, sending his lawyer into meetings with company representatives to ask for protection, according to a new book. “Game of Shadows” also details how Jason Giambi turned to performance-enhancing drugs because the Yankees’ first baseman felt pressured to please his perfectionist father, and made contact with Bonds’ trainer to inquire what he was doing “to keep Bonds playing at so high a level.”
March 23, 2006
The book “Game of Shadows” is released.
March 23, 2006
Bonds’ lawyer, Michael Rains, says he’ll ask a judge to order that the “Game of Shadows” authors turn over any profits. He wants an injunction to stop sales of the book and seize all profits from it.
March 24, 2006
A San Francisco judge denies Rains’ request.
March 26, 2006
Chicago Tribune reports that it’s highly likely Selig will appoint someone the equivalent of a special prosecutor to investigate Bonds’ ties to steroids.
March 29, 2006
ESPN.com reports Major League Baseball will in some way formally celebrate Bonds as the home run king should the San Francisco Giants slugger break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record.
March 30, 2006
Major League Baseball launches its probe into steroid use by Bonds and others. Selig said former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell — and a director of the Boston Red Sox — will lead the inquiry. The probe initially will be limited to events since September 2002, when the sport last banned performance-enhancing drugs. No timetable for the investigation is announced. Bob DuPuy, baseball’s chief operating officer, says baseball had the power to force players to cooperate. Bonds won’t discuss the matter. “I said no, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to jump off the Empire State Building — flat on my face,” he added, laughing. … Conte insists again that he never gave performance-enhancing drugs to Bonds and said a new book that makes those claims is “full of outright lies.” Conte made his comments hours after his release from prison, where he spent four months after pleading guilty to orchestrating an illegal steroids distribution scheme that allegedly included many high-profile athletes, including Bonds.
April 3, 2006
After the eighth inning of the season opener at San Diego, a toy syringe was thrown onto the field as Bonds headed to the dugout along the third-base line. He scooped it up with his glove, transferred it to his left hand and tossed it into a photo well.
April 13, 2006
AP reports that a federal grand jury is investigating whether Barry Bonds committed perjury when he testified in 2003 that he never used steroids. The panel has been hearing evidence for more than a month about whether Bonds lied to a different grand jury that was investigating the BALCO scandal. The existence of the grand jury was first reported by CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle. The personal surgeon for Bonds was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, The Chronicle reported. Dr. Arthur Ting, the physician who treated Bonds for the knee injury that kept him out for most of the 2005 season, was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury at the U.S. District courthouse in San Francisco later in the month, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.
April 14, 2006
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a federal grand jury has subpoenaed Ting to testify in its investigation of whether the Giants outfielder committed perjury in 2003 when he denied under oath that he had ever taken steroids.
April 18, 2006
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Giants trainer Stan Conte has been subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury investigating whether Bonds committed perjury in connection with the BALCO case. One of the sources, all of whom requested anonymity, said the government also has demanded Conte turn over the team’s training records related to Bonds.
April 26, 2006
The San Jose Mercury News reported that Anderson had been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating whether the Giants slugger committed perjury. Prosecutors also had subpoenaed Valente, who was sentenced last fall to three years’ probation on steroid-distribution charges.
June 22, 2006
E-mails seized by federal authorities identify Conte, the convicted BALCO founder, as a source in the San Francisco Chronicle’s reporting on the steroids scandal, according to an online court filing that accidentally revealed confidential information.
Sept. 21, 2006
Judge Jeffrey White tells San Francisco Chronicle reporters Fainaru-Wada and Williams he will order them jailed for up to 18 months if they do not comply with his order to reveal their sources.
Jan. 11, 2007
New York Daily News reports that Bonds failed a drug test under MLB’s amphetamine policy during the 2006 season. Under the policy, players are not publicly identified for a first positive test for amphetamines. According to several sources, when first informed by the MLBPA of the positive test, Bonds attributed the positive result to a substance from locker of teammate Mark Sweeney. Bonds would later deny that he took amphetamines from Sweeney’s locker.
January 2007
U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, who had been handling the investigation, resigns. He is replaced by Scott Schools.
Feb. 14, 2007
Troy Ellerman, a defense attorney who had worked for Conte and Valente, admits in court papers that he allowed San Francisco Chronicle reporters Williams and Fainaru-Wada to view transcripts of the grand jury testimony of Bonds, Jason Giambi, Sheffield and sprinter Tim Montgomery. Court documents say Ellerman agrees to plead guilty, thus sparing the reporters prison time. Ellerman had represented Conte.
Feb. 15, 2007
Ellerman pleads guilty to obstructing justice by leaking secret grand jury documents to two reporters. The federal prosecutor says the plea concludes the government’s probe of the leaks and the subpoenas of San Francisco Chronicle reporters Fainaru-Wada and Williams are withdrawn.
Feb. 20, 2007
Bonds started spring training with a pointed challenge to prosecutors: “Let them investigate. Let them, they’ve been doing it this long,” Bonds said after his first workout of the year.
April 30, 2007
Court records revealed former New York Mets clubhouse worker Kirk Radomski, who admitted selling performance-enhancing drugs to major league players, testified before the same grand jury investigating Bonds.
Aug. 7, 2007
Bonds surpasses Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record, hitting his 756th against the Washington Nationals. (Bonds finished the season with 762.)
Sept. 17, 2007
Fashion designer Marc Ecko revealed himself as winning bidder in the online auction for Bonds’ 756th home run ball, announced he was taking votes on whether to give the ball to the Hall of Fame, brand it with an asterisk or blast it into space.
Sept. 20, 2007
Giants owner Peter Magowan informed Bonds that the slugger would not be signed to the team for the 2008 season.
Sept. 26, 2007
Bonds played his last game as a San Francisco Giant. Earlier in the day, Ecko said he would brand Bonds’ record-breaking ball with an asterisk and send it to the Hall of Fame.
Oct. 5, 2007
Marion Jones pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs and announced her retirement.
Nov. 1, 2007
Bonds told MSNBC he would boycott Cooperstown if the Hall of Fame displayed his record-breaking home run ball with an asterisk. “There’s no such thing as an asterisk in baseball,” Bonds said.
Nov. 15, 2007
A federal grand jury in San Francisco indicts Bonds on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. He is accused of lying when he said he didn’t knowingly take steroids given to him by Anderson. He’s also is accused of lying that Anderson never injected him with steroids. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Dec. 7. Anderson, who had been imprisoned for refusing to testify against Bonds, was ordered released.
ak that ruined his career.