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.

RealClearSports: Yogi, Wisest Fool of the Past 50 Years

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

LA QUINTA, Calif. -- Steroids? "I don't even know what steroids look like,'' said Yogi Berra. But he knows what baseball looks like. And life looks like. And success looks like.

Lawrence Peter Berra, 84, master of the malaprop, genuine good guy, genuinely great ballplayer, full of stories but not of himself, was talking about everyone from Bob Hope to Mark McGwire.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

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