‘Say Hey’ says it all about Willie

SAN FRANCISCO — What a great few days for baseball stars from the Bay: Dusty Baker on the tube and on top of the world (Series); Willlie Mays on the silver screen and always on our minds; Barry Bonds on stage and on target.

On Saturday night there was Dusty in Houston, finally clasping the long-missing World Series title. Twenty-four hours later, we were at the century-old Castro Theater in San Francisco, and there was the documentary “Say Hey, Willie Mays!” and in attendance for what was the local premiere was Bonds, Willie’s godson and, of course, the single-season home run champion.

The film, directed by Nelson George, offers some material we’ve seen over the years — not that anyone wouldn’t want another chance to catch The Catch in the 1954 World Series — and other stories not as well known, such as the racism Mays encountered when attempting to buy a home in the City.

Mays, now 91, was only a kid from Alabama, still a segregated state, when he joined the New York Giants in 1950, but he was brilliant virtually from the start. The actress Tallulah Bankhead said, “There are only two geniuses the world — Willie Mays and Will Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare didn’t give interviews.

So much of Mays’ genius, certainly, is physical. He was a so-called five-tool player — hit, run, hit with power, catch and throw — as we see again after he chased down Vic Wertz’s towering drive in the ’54 World Series. Willie spun around and fired the ball back to the infield.

I came to San Francisco in 1965, when Mays still was hitting home runs. The Giants came here in 1958, and Mays has a tough time adjusting — not to the game but to the Candlestick Park winds that, as mentioned in the documentary, kept his long balls from clearing the fences.

San Francisco was Joe DiMaggio’s town. He grew up here and played minor league ball here, years before the Giants arrived.

So when Mays came here in ’58, long after DiMaggio’s retirement following the 1951 season, the press looked back and not forward. Willie was not appreciated, Tallulah Bankhead to the contrary.

DiMaggio was damn good. His 56-game hitting streak in 1941 surely never will be broken. After Joe left the game, he would make public appearances and be introduced as “America’s greatest living ball player.”

But Joe was no Willie Mays, and he wasn’t forced to play home games at Candlestick Park as Mays was. 

George’s documentary, which will be streamed on HBO, doesn’t forget that Reggie Jackson played in Oakland and is a Hall of Famer, or Dusty Baker, who after the World Series win is destined to be one. 

Barry Bonds said the documentary “basically is about mentoring, about growing wiser and more proficient as we mature.”

The plan certainly worked for Willie Mays.

Dare we add, “Say hey?”

Bonds hit homers but, again, not the jackpot

They kept showing videos of the swing, so powerful, so effective. Then they kept showing the differential between the votes Barry Bonds received and the votes he needed — and painfully, for one last time, failed to receive.

The man could play as well as anyone who ever played. Baseball, that is.

But he didn’t play by the rules, or more accurately by the standards created to keep the playing field level — even though, level or tilted, there was no doubt that the field belonged to Bonds.

He's off the Hall of Fame ballot now. His decade is done. His journey to the Baseball Hall of Fame is unfinished, and no matter the optimistic predictions of a rescue by the Hall’s veterans’ committee, it may remain unfinished forever. Along with the journey of Roger Clemens.

Bonds, who hit more home runs in the history of America’s most historic game, 73 for a season, 762 for a career, and Clemens, who won the Cy Young award seven times, did everything possible to improve.

Which is the problem.

They are acknowledged to have used products known as PEDs, performance-enhancing drugs, which because they allowed more repetitive workouts resulted in greater strength and resilience.

That each was a probable Hall of Famer before using the PEDs — Bonds was a seven-time MVP — is not the issue. He and Clemens were tainted. They always will be tainted.

So much of this is about timing. Barry’s was impeccable when he stood at the plate, not so much when it came to his place in the overview of the sport.

Maybe if Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire hadn’t made Bonds jealous by the attention the country gave to their 1998 home run battle, Bonds would have been content to go about business as usual.

He was great, to his justified way of thinking, greater than anyone. But the big boys got the big praise.

Remember that commercial, “Chicks dig the long ball”? So did everyone else, as Bonds quickly enough discovered.

True, Bonds had a prickly personality, which seemed modified after he retired. To get an interview required patience and luck. He rarely said hello or addressed journalists by name, but Barry knew every one of them.

As I learned during the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) hearings.

This was the first day at the San Francisco Federal Building. The writers came down one elevator, the defendants and lawyers another. We waited on the ground floor. Suddenly, Barry yells my name and greets me with a hug. Who knew?

What we do know is this: whether he ever gets into the Hall, he was a Hall of Fame player, learning baseball from the time he was toddler, the son of a man, Bobby Bonds, who could hit home runs and steal bases as few others could.

Bobby in reality was the first 40-40-man, home runs and stolen bases, well before Jose Canseco, although he lost one of the home runs because of a rainout.

They say Barry always felt he had to overcome the burden of being Bobby’s son. Whether that was the case, Bobby delighted in being Barry’s father. Once, when the media was down on Barry, deservedly or not, Bobby walked by and without any bitterness said, “Be kind to Barry.”

Now after the rejection — Bonds received 260 Hall votes this time, well short of the 296 required to reach the 75 percent figure that gets a player in — he definitely needs more kindness.

His own disappointment may not be known for a while, if ever, but the disappointment for fans of the San Francisco Giants, his team after a career start with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is apparent.

He was their guy, the one who could hit balls into the bay almost on command. Unfortunately, he’s still waiting to hit the jackpot.

S.F. Examiner: Bonds shows side we’ve rarely seen

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

They had dined on steak. Then came the induction ceremony and Barry Bonds figuratively had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. But of course.

This was his city, San Francisco, where his game helped build a ballpark and a reputation. These were his people packed in the ballroom of the Westin St. Frances Hotel, across the cable car tracks from Union Square, for the annual Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame program Monday.

Read the full story here.

© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

Does Anyone Doubt Barry, Roger Are Hall of Famers?

By Art Spander
 
The issue is one of perception more than of judgment. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – and yes, Mike Piazza – have not been allowed to pass muster. Yet does anyone, including the balloters who rejected them, doubt they are Hall of Famers?
    
Which is why the vote as a lesson to future generations, if you will, is nonsense. Yes, I voted for them, along with Mark McGwire. And I would vote for Pete Rose, who merely recorded more hits than anyone in the history of major league baseball, except he’s never going to be on the ballot.
    
We know Rose is a Hall of Famer, even without the plaque. Same thing for Bonds, the all-time home run leader, and Clemens, who won seven Cy Young Awards.
  
The prettiest girl in town doesn’t necessarily have to win Miss America for us to recognize her beauty. Rose, Bonds, Clemens and Piazza won’t have to get elected for us to know they are Hall of Famers.
    
Bonds won three MVPs before most of the country even had even heard of performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens struck out 20 in a game back in 1986. (And McGwire hit 49 home runs in his rookie season, 1987, before anyone could tell a steroid from a stereo.)
    
A little chicanery – although the self-righteous will say one has nothing to do with the other, even if it does because both play loose with the rules: Gaylord Perry was elected to the Hall and then wrote a book describing how he doctored the balls he was pitching with petroleum jelly. A little wink and nod. And a permanent plaque.
   
Either the Hall of Fame is a reward for greatness or it is not. The voting writers failed to make that decision.
  
“The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game,” was the statement released by Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association on Wednesday when it was announced for the first time since 1996 that not a single player had been elected to the Hall.
   
Understand, the man is biased. He represents the players, good and bad. Understand, the man is correct.
   
The “best players to have ever played the game.” If Bonds, Clemens and Rose are not in that category, then we better create a new category.
  
The New York Times on Wednesday had an article about the reprobates who are in the Hall, the racists, the sociopaths. “Plaster saints is not what we have in the Hall of Fame,” the baseball historian John Thorn told the Times. Nor, for the moment, suspected PED users, not that some hadn’t already been elected.
    
A candidate, someone who has played 10 years and been retired five years, needs 75 percent of the votes from the eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America to make the Hall. Bonds received 36.2 percent, Clemens 37.6 percent. Nearly two-thirds of the voting baseball writers opposed each? Please.
    
They talk about the smell test. What we lack here is the vision test. Was Barry Bonds the player in the bigs from the early 1990s until he left after the 1997 season? Was Roger Clemens the man you’d want on the mound when it mattered? Yes to both those questions.
    
Cooperstown isn’t Lourdes. The inductees only had to be recognized as some of the best players of their time, not Mother Theresas in spikes. The only position player I saw better than Bonds was Willie Mays, Barry’s godfather.
    
What made Bonds so effective wasn’t necessarily his power -- not until the later years when we’re told he bulked up to get the home runs and attention of McGwire and Sammy Sosa – but his baseball skills, learned at the foot of his major league dad, Bobby.
   
Barry Bonds knew when to steal, where to position himself on defense, toward which base he should throw. His arm wasn’t the best, but his instincts were.
   
The wonderful arm belonged to Clemens, who at times simply wound up and threw the ball past people. He was the Rocket Man, an Elton John song come to life and come to win. As with Bonds, he made games adventures, full of excitement.
   
Piazza is the finest-hitting catcher ever. He’s never been accused of using steroids, at least not openly. But he was a star in what detractors have labeled the steroid era, and so by suggestion and association he is linked and punished.
   
Buster Olney of ESPN pointed out that baseball, the game, the business, exploited Bonds and Clemens – and the rest – making money and making headlines off of their accomplishments. There was elation as McGwire and Sosa had their home run battle in the summer of ’98. There was box office.
    
Fun while it lasted. Guilt ever since it finished.
   
No one is certain who took what, but what is certain is that a Hall of Fame without Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the best of their time, is inconsequential.

RealClearSports: Clemens' Attorney Throws High, Hard Ones

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

Maybe the federal government will figure it out now. Lawsuits are like sporting events. The team with the talent, the high-priced guys, invariably wins. Meaning in this situation, the opposition.

Author and onetime sports writer Paul Gallico told us long ago that while the battle isn't always to the strong and the race to the swift, it's still a good way to bet.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2012

SF Examiner: Bonds steps up to plate for Stow family

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Is it permissible to say something positive about Barry Bonds? Thank you. Bonds pledged to pay for the college education of Bryan Stow’s two children. That’s a splash hit of another sort.

Barry’s taken a lot of knocks, some of them deserved, certainly. So how about some praise? How about a high-five for someone who can use a few compliments?

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: For Bonds, No Jail, No Hall

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Feel safer now? The feds got Barry Lamar Bonds. Barely. They took their money, which is our money, and spent it in an attempt to show that Bonds had lied, which he may have done but also which the feds were unable to prove.

No perjury, which is lying under oath. Just obstruction, which ironically in baseball allows the runner to go to the next base.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Despite scandal, slugger Barry Bonds' legacy remains fully intact

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The numbers are not going to change, and neither are most opinions. Barry Bonds will keep the home run records he set, even if everyone from Cooperstown to Candlestick knows he used performance-enhancing drugs.

What everyone didn’t know was he could be convicted for previously testifying before a grand jury that, in effect, he was a celebrity child. That was his defense 7½ years ago.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

Newsday (N.Y.): Jason Giambi: Bonds' trainer sent me steroids

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- Former Yankee Jason Giambi testified Tuesday that Greg Anderson, the jailed former trainer of Barry Bonds, provided him with performance-enhancing drugs and instructions in their use.

Giambi, the 2000 American League MVP when he was with the Athletics; his younger brother Jeremy; and Marvin Benard, onetime Giants teammate of Bonds, appeared on the witness stand in Bonds' perjury trial.

The prosecution seemed to have an advantage on a day lacking the drama of Monday, when Kimberly Bell, Bonds' former mistress, testified against the home run king.

First, former Giants trainer Stan Conte said he tried to have Anderson and another Bonds trainer, Harvey Shields, banned from the clubhouse. Conte testified he noted Bonds had gained weight and developed acne, which prosecutors contend was the result of steroid use.

Then Jason Giambi told the jury in U.S. District Court that Anderson mailed him injectable testosterone and the infamous cream and clear, undetectable steroids produced by Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO).

Jeremy Giambi's testimony virtually duplicated Jason's, confirming Anderson told them what the substances were. "I understood it was a steroid,'' Jeremy said.

Anderson is a key figure in the case, which resulted from Bonds' telling a grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly took steroids. Anderson last week was put behind bars a third time for refusing to testify against Bonds.

Bonds, 46, who left baseball after 2007, set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001, and the career mark, 762. He is charged with four counts of lying and one of obstruction of justice. To convict on perjury, the prosecution must prove the defendant was "knowingly lying.''

Conte, now a trainer with the Dodgers, said Bonds in 2003 acknowledged Anderson was dealing steroids. "Greg was only selling steroids to help his kid,'' is what he said Bonds told him.

Jason Giambi said he used a steroid, Deca Durabolin, before traveling with Bonds and other major-leaguers to Japan in the late fall of 2002. But after Bonds had him contact Anderson, he changed his routine.

Said Jason Giambi: "[Anderson] referred to it as an alternative to steroids that would be undetectable on a test.''

One of Bonds' defense attorneys, Cristina Arguedas, in cross-examination tried to show that Jason Giambi did not know for sure what he received from Anderson.

Giambi did acknowledge he told a grand jury he was never expressly told what the "cream'' and "the clear'' were, other than being alternative forms of steroids.

But prosecutor Jeff Nedrow then asked Giambi about several items he received from Anderson, and Giambi replied, "I understood what it was. A steroid.''

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http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/jason-giambi-bonds-trainer-sent-me-steroids-1.2788807
Copyright © 2011 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Bonds' ex-mistress testifies against him

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- In testimony both tearful and  confrontational, Barry Bonds' former mistress Monday described the advent of his hair loss, acne and other changes to the  anatomy that a doping expert previously said could be caused by the use of  anabolic steroids.

Kimberly Bell said she was Bonds' girlfriend from 1994 until 2003, when he told her "to disappear.'' She also testified that the former slugger threatened her more than once, insisting, "I thought he would kill me.''

Bell, who said she met Bonds in the parking lot at Candlestick Park after a game during his playing career for the Giants, is a prosecution witness in the case against Bonds. He is accused of four counts of perjury and one of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury.

In testimony, Bell described Bonds' shrinking body parts and behavior in which he became "aggressive, irritable and impatient'' from 1999 to 2001.

Twice during the long session, Bell began to sob. On other occasions, she was terse with a defense attorney.

Bonds, 46, sat next to his attorneys, occasionally twisting in his chair and taking notes but not showing any emotion.

Bell said that Bonds, after they broke up, refused to pay for a Scottsdale, Ariz., home he had promised her.

When asked by prosecutor Jeff Nedrow if she ever discussed steroids with Bonds, Bell responded that she did around 1999-2000 at her apartment in Mountain View, Calif., about 30 miles south of San  Francisco. Bonds had a serious elbow injury, and Bell had asked why it was so severe, and, she testified, "He said
it was because of steroids.''

She said he told her that Mark McGwire and other ballplayers were using steroids "to get ahead.'' McGwire in 1998 set the single-season home run record of 70, which Bonds broke with 73 in 2001.

Defense attorney Chris Arguedas tried to poke holes in Bell's testimony by insisting Bell was only trying to make money off her relationship with Bonds, by authoring a book with a ghost writer.

Bell was depicted as a bitter former girlfriend who in trying to promote the book, which never was completed, went on various radio and television programs, including Howard Stern's.

Arguedas also made much of the fact that when Bell signed the lease for the Scottsdale house, where she lived from 2002-04, it was as a "secondary home,'' not a primary home, trying to persuade the jury Bell committed fraud on the documents.

Bell said she first thought of Bonds as the actor Richard Gere in the film "An Officer and a Gentleman,'' but was hurt when he told her in 1998 he was marrying someone else.

Longtime Giants equipment manager Mike Murphy, who conceded he was "very nervous,'' said Bonds originally wore a size 7 1/4 baseball cap but that his head size increased to 7 3/8. Murphy also explained, however, that the hat sizes of Giants Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey also increased as they aged, although it occurred after their playing careers ended.

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http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/bonds-ex-mistress-testifies-against-him-1.2786806?p
Copyright © 2011 Newsday. All rights reserved.

RealClearSports: It's Not What Bonds Did, It's What He Said

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds used steroids. Hardly one of those "This just in'' items. Everyone knows it. His own attorneys concede it.

But that's not the issue in his trial, which, depending on one's viewpoint, is necessary or absurd.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: As Barry Bonds trial pushes on, mystery of Anderson grows

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He is back in jail again, for being loyal. Or being a bit crazy. Or because, as some believe, we are a world of skeptics and some day he will be paid for his silence.

Greg Anderson is the man no one can understand.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: U.S. v. Bonds Makes Great Theater

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — You have to like the way the event is listed in official documents and on the media badges: "USA v. Barry Lamar Bonds.'' As if it were an Olympic hockey match or basketball game, not a perjury trial of a baseball player.

What do the officials do, go out on Golden Gate Avenue in front of the federal building and gather a few people to chant, "USA, USA''?

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

Newsday (N.Y.): Lawyer calls Bonds' defense 'ridiculous'

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO — Barry Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, made it 3-for-3 Tuesday, again refusing to testify against his boyhood pal in Bonds' perjury case, and again being sent to custody for contempt of court.

Anderson, accused by the prosecution of providing illegal performance-enhancing drugs to the all-time home run king, already has spent more than a year in jail or prison. United States District Court Judge Susan Illston told Anderson he would remain in custody for the duration of the trial, which began Monday and could last 2-4 weeks.

Anderson's lawyer, Mark Geragos, repeating earlier comments, said Anderson doesn't trust the prosecution. Illston said she hoped Anderson would change his mind and would keep him confined for contempt "until such time you will testify."

Illston told the jury of eight women and four men that to prove perjury in Bonds' December 2003 statements to a grand jury, prosecutors must show his testimony was "knowingly false.''

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella told the jury that Bonds "deliberately lied'' when he testified he had never knowingly used anabolic steroids. The prosecutor said Bonds' claim he believed the substances he was taking were flaxseed oil and arthritis cream, were "quite frankly, an utterly ridiculous and unbelievable story."

In his opening statement, Bonds' lead attorney, Allen Ruby, said: "... Barry Bonds went to the grand jury and told the truth and did his best.''

Ruby later said government witnesses and leaks "created a caricature of Barry Bonds, terrible guy, mean.'' Ruby also criticized government witnesses for cooperating with the media, saying they created "poisonous things that have been out there about Barry.''

Food and Drug Administration agent Jeff Novitzky, one of the prosecution's prime witnesses, said he found a "treasure trove of drugs'' when he searched through the garbage of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), the firm accused of creating the substances Bonds allegedly used.

Ruby went after Novitzky about a meeting he had with a former Bonds friend, Steven Hoskins, eliciting a few laughs. Hoskins, a former 49er who was involved in the sports memorabilia business with Bonds, is to be a prosecution witness.

Rudy told the jury the "government will bring in three or four witnesses to discuss the size of Mr. Bonds' organs, his head, his feet . . . '' Bonds' increased head size, skeptics had said, were caused by his use of steroids.

While Parrella spoke, Bonds, dressed in a blue suit, sat with hands clasped between Ruby and his other lead attorney, Chris Arguedas. Bonds didn't appear shaken by the testimony. After the long court session recessed for the day at about 3:30 p.m. PDT, Bonds greeted a journalist he recognized before walking through a light rain to a waiting SUV.

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http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/lawyer-calls-bonds-defense-ridiculous-1.2776038
Copyright © 2011 Newsday. All rights reserved.

SF Examiner: Barry Bonds trial has finally reached point of exhaustion

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The 7½-year itch. The government’s unrelenting attempt to convict Barry Bonds begins once again next month, yet another form of March Madness.

According to the best reports, the feds are now into taxpayers for $6 million in trying to prove Barry is guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. And they’ll be spending a great deal more.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Bay Area stars pioneered steroid era

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

SAN FRANCISCO — A few sniffles from Mark McGwire. Did someone say there’s no crying in baseball? Of course there is. Our pal, Barry Bonds, cried long ago on the Roy Firestone show.

And you thought the suspected (and, for one, acknowledged) use of steroids was the only thing that linked the home run kings.

Obviously, it’s the Bay Area influence. Not for teardrops, but for substance abuse.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2010 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Bonds is Looking Better Every Day

By Art Spander

Day by day, leak by leak, Barry Bonds keeps looking better and baseball worse. Bonds didn't ruin the game. Bonds didn't poison pigeons or fail to stand for the national anthem. He simply used performance enhancing drugs.

So, we learn, did a great many others, A-Rod, the Rocket, Manny and now, according to one of those anonymous reports -- this one on the New York Times web site, which makes it considerably more credible than others -- David Ortiz.

We may not be amused, but neither are we surprised, about the names or the fact the names keep being made public, despite promises no such things would happen.

Players, dozens of them, were tested in 2003 and told the results would remain secret. That would have been impossible.

If we know what's going on in the White House we're going to know what's going on in Bud Selig's House. You think those TV shows stay on the air because people don't like to talk?

Bonds now is insignificant. We went after him and his silent partner, Greg Anderson, the trainer, so long ago it's almost ancient history. Mark Fainaru-Wada and his then San Francisco Chronicle colleague Lance Williams left no syringe unturned. We acted like the sky was falling, then shrugged.

What's falling now are other names into place, the latest of those Ortiz and Manny, who in 2004 combined to help the Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years. And just an aside, you think any of those self-righteous Boston fans would give back the title because, like the Bonds homers they yelped about, it might be tainted?

The line forms on the right. Soon there will be more stars who used what daintily are known as "performance enhancing drugs,'' or PEDs, than didn't. It was common practice. It was, some will argue, a necessity.

In their book, "Game of Shadows,'' Fainaru-Wada and Williams insist what pushed Bonds over the edge was watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in their magical run in 1998 and bristling that the two were getting more attention than he.

Barry got his attention and his home run record. Does it deserve an asterisk, as Hank Aaron, who held the old mark, contends? Maybe. But Selig, the commissioner, is loath to tarnish his legacy. So there aren't going to be any little stars next to a name with the notation, "Was thought to have put something into his body besides milk and honey.''

Players took steroids. Baseball did nothing to stop them until it was too late. Back in the 1989 World Series, the one in which an earthquake had us much more frightened than a little thing like illegal substances, somebody mentioned a drink called the "Canseco Cocktail.''

In theory, Jose -- looking, well, bulked up -- was ingesting stuff that enabled him to hit that shot into the third deck of the place now called Rogers Centre but then known as SkyDome.

How naïve. He wasn't taking things orally, he was taking injections in his bottom, not that the method was of such great importance.

After the New York Times disclosures on Ortiz and Ramirez -- revelations, they're not -- Canseco said he wasn't surprised. Neither was anybody else, Jose. But we have to find people willing to give their opinions, and inevitably when drugs and baseball are involved, Canseco appears as an expert witness.

The probability that anyone who starting in the mid-1990s hit a lot of balls over fences was artificially enhanced has turned into a very good one. The probability that those major leaguers who agreed to be tested "secretly'' in 2002 will be outed is an excellent one.

The feds, knowing all too well that steroids were illegal in America, if not America's national pastime, seized the results of the tests. Now newspapers are seizing the chance to make everyone look bad.

The Times says its information about Ramirez and Ortiz "emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation." The lawyers spoke anonymously, the Times said, because the testing information is under seal by a court order.

Barry Bonds has a different problem. He's being hounded by the government on charges of perjury, the U.S. claiming he lied under oath when in December 2003 Barry said he never used the stuff.

But the guess is that Barry never will come to trial. And who cares anymore? He took his grief. He was the Lone Ranger, the one who stood alone until it seems there was no room left on the list for all players who were guilty. The line forms to the right.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was recently honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

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http://www1.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/07/30/bonds_is_looking_better_every_day.html
© RealClearSports 2009

SF Examiner: Time for government to forfeit case against Bonds

SAN FRANCISCO — To the question of whether anyone remains interested in Barry Bonds in his second year out of a Giants uniform, there is a clear and present answer: The U.S. attorney’s office does.

But not to join their team.

They are hardly interested in putting Barry behind, say, the No. 3 hitter. What they want is to put him behind bars.

Lots of luck.

A few days past, federal prosecutors filed a brief requesting a reversal of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston’s well-known decision to bar from Barry’s perjury case evidence she determined to be hearsay.

Yes, Judge Illston’s ruling came back in February, and this is June, but the wheels of justice grind slowly, sort of the way Bonds moved out in left field his last year with the Giants, the 2007 season.

Peter Keane, Dean Emeritus of the Golden Gate University School of Law, told the New York Daily News that the recent government filing “reeks of desperation,” and is merely “postponing the inevitable.”

So feds, give it up already.

We admire your perseverance and attention to detail. If George Washington told the truth, ballplayers probably ought to do the same.

And anybody who has dealt with him, in a courtroom or in a clubhouse, understands Barry can be uncooperative, abrasive and a pain, thus there is an eagerness to get after the man.

But enough. Barry didn’t sell people sub-prime mortgages. Barry didn’t run off with anyone’s 401 (k). Barry didn’t tell the world Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The government essentially is wasting millions of our dollars trying to make a mark against a guy who has made his mark, 762 career home runs. What if he were just a singles hitter with a .238 lifetime average?

“These documents tend to show that Bonds was lying when he testified in the grand jury that he did not knowingly take steroids,” U.S. attorney Barbara J. Valliere wrote in a 56-page argument dealing with Bonds.

Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, who represents Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson — aka The Guy Who Won’t Talk — called the government’s appeal “the last vestige of scoundrels.”

The dirty rotten kind or just the ordinary garden variety?

Maybe Barry is guilty, maybe he isn’t. What does it matter any more?

The guy we could call the Slammer for all those long balls is not going to the slammer. He’s almost certainly not even going to trial.

Which is fine with me. Spend the money on something worthwhile, cancer research, feeding the underprivileged. I keep getting images of Javert, the police inspector in Les Miz, who stalks Jean Valjean through the years.

Does America care more that Bonds seemingly cheated in baseball than a lot of guys at banks and loan agencies cheated people out of their homes?

Can’t the feds and Barry, who now also has domestic problems, call this battle a tie without plans for a makeup game?

Bonds’ attorneys might tell the prosecutors how much they admire persistence. The prosecutors might tell Barry and his counsel that while there’s no clock in baseball there should be one in perjury cases.

Then the attorneys can write books and make tons of money. It’s as American as apple pie, motherhood and denial of steroid use.

Art Spander has been covering Bay Area sports since 1965 and also writes at www.artspander.com and www.realclearsports.com.
E-mail him at typoes@aol.com.

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http://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/Spander-Time-for-government-to-forfeit-case-against-Bonds-47487317.html
Copyright 2009 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: No Boos for Bonds

By Art Spander

He had come back for the first time this season.

Barry Bonds had returned to the one place he is embraced, not despised. The Bay Area’s last superstar was in the front row at AT&T Park, next to the managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants, waving and smiling.

What a difference a uniform makes. “Laundry” is what Jerry Seinfeld said. Our guys are great. Your guys stink. Wait. Our guy used to be your guy, didn’t he?

For the Giants, their guy, Bonds, started out a long while ago in Pittsburgh, where, as in most of baseball in recent times, he was treated with disdain.

A cheater? A steroid user? A perjurer? Those are the claims against Bonds, and the reasons that, as his career wound down and the home run totals went up, Barry was booed virtually everywhere.

Except San Francisco.

Where this season, the fans have taken to booing Manny Ramirez, who has never been accused of anything similar to Bonds’ sins, but plays for the franchise that drives San Francisco partisans to frustration, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers, hailed and hated, came to San Francisco for a three-game series. Bonds came out of, well, it might not have been hiding – but he does spend his days down in Beverly Hills – to be a willing viewer and to be willingly viewed.

There was Barry, in the seat adjoining that of the individual in charge of the Giants, Bill Neukom, receiving a standing ovation. There was Manny on the diamond, receiving derision for no reason other than he’s Manny. And a Dodger.

Although during the winter, when Manny was a free agent, there was talk he might even sign with the Giants. Which would have made him the new idol in a region that without Bonds, without Joe Montana, Steve Young, Jose Canseco, Jim Plunkett, is bereft of idols.

And so Bonds is remembered fondly. He is the symbol of better days, of headlines and cover stories, of the recognition the Giants, and the region, no longer receive.

Neukom was the lead attorney for Microsoft for nearly a quarter-century. And there he was, schmoozing with someone who has been indicted on perjury, although mostly because the U.S. government, which ought to be more concerned with other matters, is out to get Bonds.

Barry never could have been described as an extrovert, not in dealing with the media. Or should that be not dealing with the media? Yet, from his seat near the Giants’ dugout, Bonds easily moved upstairs to the booth where Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper do the local telecasts.

Barry communicator. Barry politician. Barry tortured saint.

After the 2007 season, having raised his all-time career home run total to 762, Bonds was not offered a new contract by the Giants. He could hit, but he couldn’t run or throw. He didn’t play in 2008 and, despite insisting he is not retired, surely never will play again.

He’s tainted, and baseball is attempting to step away from the steroids era, so why link up with a bad memory? Bonds, who will be 45 in July, also has slowed.

Is he worth a contract, even ignoring the baggage, which nobody will ignore? Seemingly not, or Barry already would have been on somebody’s roster, presumably a team in the American League where Barry could be a designated hitter.

It would have been interesting to see Barry with, say, the Yankees or Angels, to hear how the fans reacted now that he was on their club. To hear how the San Francisco fans reacted when he was in a different uniform.

In the early 1980s, Reggie Smith was the Manny Ramirez of his time. For Giants fans. One game at old Candlestick Park, they taunted him so much he literally climbed into stands to go after a spectator. Then Smith came to the Giants, a free agent, before the 1982 season. The same people who agitated Smith to a point he wanted to punch them out were now his pals, chanting “Reggie, Reggie, Reggie.”

Mark Twain said politicians, old buildings and prostitutes become respectable with old age. So seemingly do ballplayers, even in the minds of those who wished them ill when they were competing. We are forgiving, especially when it comes to sports.

The farther Bonds moves away from his active days, the more accepted he will be, although at the moment, the one truly safe haven remains San Francisco.

Up here, Bonds is a hero. It’s Manny who is the villain.

As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009.

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http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/04/no-boos-for-bonds.html
© RealClearSports 2009