Posted on 09/22/2006 3:08:04 AM PDT by mcg2000
BALCO founder Victor Conte bragged to an associate that Barry Bonds had intimate knowledge of the designer steroids he received from the Bay Area company, and that the Giants slugger took an active interest in what the substances contained, ESPN The Magazine has learned.
The disclosure comes to light amid reports that Patrick Arnold, the Illinois chemist who is scheduled to report to federal prison next week for his part in the steroid conspiracy, has made the same admission to a media outlet.
The admission appears to contradict Bonds' sworn testimony before a grand jury in 2004.
In a report on the testimony, the San Francisco Chronicle described Bonds as testifying that he did not think the clear liquid he received from his trainer, Greg Anderson, was a designer steroid. He reportedly said that he thought Anderson "wouldn't jeopardize our friendship" by giving him banned drugs. In that Chronicle report, Bonds reportedly said that he thought that the clear liquid was merely flaxseed oil to help his ailing knee heal.
I wonder what Willie Mays thinks?
Cheating Bonds still passes....
Gerry Callahan
Boston Herald
Nov 16,2004
Well, Barry Bonds boosted another National League MVP award, but at least we're making progress. Two years ago, Bonds was a unanimous choice of the voters. Last year he got 28-of-32 first-place votes, and yesterday it was announced that the number of writers who had the good sense to select someone else was up to eight.
Good for them. Maybe the Baseball Writers of America are not as quick to catch on as the Scott Peterson jury, but clearly there are some vigilantes in the press box who would rather not be complicit in Bonds' latest heist The guy hit 362. He slugged .802. He hit 45 home runs. If everything had been on the level, of course he would be the MVP. But everything was not on the level. It never is with Bonds.
The guy cheats, and everyone knows it. In this case, he cheated Adrian Beltre, the runner-up, out of an award that should have belonged to Beltre. Albert Pujols finished second to Bonds last year and the year before. Some people are fawning over Bonds today because he now has seven MVPs, but Pujols is only 24 years old. How many MVPs would he end up with if he weren't swimming against the strongest East German woman every year?
Maybe someday baseball will do for Pujols what the folks at the Boston Marathon did for Jacqueline Gareau, the Canadian runner who in 1980 finished second to another legendary cheater, Rosie Ruiz. They brought Gareau back to Boston
where, in her street clothes, she re-enacted the final 200 yards of the race. Ironically, Ruiz got caught when some people noticed that she didn't have any muscle, sort of the flipside to Bonds' problem.
After the scandal unfolded, a lot of people from Boston apologized to Gareau. Will Major League Baseball someday apologize to all the players who had their big days, their awards, their records ripped away by the man with the misshapen skull?
Ill-gotten awards are bad enough, but Bonds,of course, has higher crimes in mind. Perhaps as soon as next summer, he intends to steal the game's most coveted record from Hank Aaron, who weighed about 180 pounds when he hit 755 home runs. Bonds once weighed about 180 pounds, too. Now he is listed at 228 and believed to be 20 pounds more than that. He's the Pamela Anderson of baseball players. It's silly to even wonder if he's legit anymore. But when you talk about Bonds' team, you're not talking about the San Francisco Giants. You're talking about experts at BALCO, the trainers and chemists and various facilitators who worked hard to keep Bonds ahead of baseball's hapless posse. As Bonds' dear friend and alleged dealer Greg Anderson said on tape, they knew when the tests were coming. They knew how to beat the system, and yesterday they beat it for his seventh MVP award. As a bonus, Bonds picked up $500,000 for winning the award. Martha Stewart is waking up in a cell this morning for less.
Bonds isn't the only guy with an illegitimate MVP. Jose Canseco has one, and he promises to write a book about it, as soon as he learns how to, you know, write. Ken Caminiti won the award in the National League in 1996 and later admitted much of his success came out of a syringe.
Caminiti, like Bonds, got noticeably bigger and more muscular, and his power numbers soared. The only difference between the two is that Bonds is much smarter and more sophisticated. Caminiti actually traveled to Tijuana and bought his steroids on the street, like any old junkie.
Bonds knows enough to surround himself with experts. Anderson, his dear friend and trainer, has been charged with supplying athletes with drugs. To believe Bonds is on the level is to believe Anderson was just dealing to other athletes. Not his dear friend. Not his biggest, richest and most famous client. And by the way, Scott Peterson, how was the fishing?
Here's another difference between Caminiti and Bonds: Camini-ti's dead. Bonds is very much alive
and threatening to make next season look about as legitimate as Dan Rather's documents. It doesn't even matter anymore how MLB or ESPN want to handle the next dubious Bonds milestone. Baseball fans, like the writers, are gradually coming around. They know watching Bonds go deep is like watching the 6-foot-tall kid with the mustache strike out the side in the Little League World Series. Someone's cheating. How long before they catch him? Pete Rose, who gambled on baseball while managing the Reds, gets banned for life. Bonds, who gained 50 pounds of muscle while hanging with alleged steroid dealers, gets $18 million a year and another MVP. Too bad BALCO can't make a masking agent to hide that stench.
During the World Series, Bonds made an appearance in St. Louis to pick up the Hank Aaron Award, a perverse irony if ever there was one. The AL winner was Manny Ramirez, who, of course, was already in St. Louis. As Ray Ratto pointed out on ESPN.com, the ridiculously gracious fans of St. Louis cheered Ramirez, even though Manny was busy kicking the crap out of their Cardinals. Bonds they booed. Even Cardinals fans can only be played for fools for so long.
This home run king has no clothes, and everyone knows it. In the end, the commissioner doesn't have to worry about putting an asterisk next to Barry Bonds in the record book. You can rest assured, Bud: It's already there.
I follow baseball fairly closely, but have managed to avoid knowing how close Bonds is to breaking the Aaron's record. I just don't want to know. It's too sad to contemplate.
No, I just can not believe it. /irony
I have been a baseball fan since Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world" and became a huge fan of the on deck hitter ....Willie Mays. The Giants became my NL team and I followed them until Bonds destroyed the integrity of the game. When he breaks Hank Aaron's record I will have come full circle and will wash my hands of the sport. A home run by a Giant player created 55 years of passion for a once great game and it will be a home run by a Giant player that kills that passion.
Thanks for the doing nothing Allan H. "Bud" Selig. You have prostituted yourself the entire game for fraudulent records.
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