Most baseball fans have been suspicious of Barry Bonds' steroid usage for years, but it's still weird to see it all in print.
Wednesday, reams of documents from Greg Anderson's house were unsealed ahead of Bonds' trial for lying to a grand jury and they allege that Bonds tested positive for steroid use not just once, but four times, including once in a test given by Major League Baseball in 2003 (when the league was testing to assess whether a drug program was necessary and the results were not made public).
So, that's it. I mean, we all talked about Bonds' potential steroid use for years, but this is the smoking gun. One failed test is one thing, four failed tests plus a failed amphetamine test is something else. Bonds and his lawyers will move to suppress these documents, but the implication is immediately clear: Unless there's been a huge mix-up, it certainly looks like Barry Bonds took steroids.
So where do we go now? Beyond the baseball implications, Bonds could really find himself in a lot of trouble. He's being tried for lying to a grand jury when he told them that he didn't take steroids. While a designer steroid like THG might fall into a gray area when trying to define "steroid," these failed tests are for methenolone, nandrolone, exogenous testosterone, and clomiphene, a drug used by bodybuilders to recover during steroid cycles. There's no gray area with drugs like that -- those are steroids.
The real remaining question is whether or not these documents make it unambiguously clear that the person they're referring to is Bonds. Anderson is the one person that can answer these questions and it looks like he's going to keep refusing to do so. I don't know if the government has witnesses other than Anderson who can answer those questions, so it's impossible to say what the outcome of this trial might be.
How baseball reacts, however, isn't tied to the trial. Even if they can't pin this evidence on Bonds in court, it's pretty damning. We've still got years to go for this debate, but I can't imagine Bonds getting anywhere near the votes necessary for the Hall of Fame unless he proves that these tests aren't his.
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Is this enough evidence to do that? Is this enough for Bud Selig to strike his home run records from the books? Did he really take more steroids than anyone else that played in the late 1990s and early 2000s? I don't think we can answer those questions yet, but these are certainly all debates that are going to take place in the next few months.
Unsealed Court Documents Say Barry Bonds Took Steroids originally appeared on MLB FanHouse on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:20:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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