Free Republic

51 minutes ago MILWAUKEE - Barry Bonds hit his 734th career home run Saturday night, breaking Hank Aaron's NL record in the same city where the Hall of Fame slugger started and ended his major league career. The San Francisco Giants star hit a 1-0 pitch from Milwaukee's Chris Capuano over the right-center fence in the third inning, just out of the reach of outfielders Brady Clark and Corey Hart. Bonds, who hit No. 733 and drove in a season-high six runs Friday night, is 21 homers shy of Aaron's career mark of 755. It was Bonds' 26th home run...

The federal investigation into steroids has expanded to the world of bodybuilding. The home and gymnasium of a bodybuilder linked to Balco Laboratories was searched last November, and last weekend federal agents reportedly handed out subpoenas at an Ohio bodybuilding convention co-owned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman in Los Angles told the Mercury News that agents searched the Temecula home of Milos Sarcev, a former Mr. Yugoslavia. ESPN reported Thursday night that federal agents delivered at least five subpoenas to bodybuilders at the Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, as part of a second grand jury...

Soon the tentacles of the BALCO doping case had reached into professional baseball and football, into Olympic track and field, into championship boxing, into the very consciousness of the American sports fan. There was grand-jury testimony and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sanctions and congressional hearings with pumped-up athletes stuffed into designer suits talking about designer steroids. And now the trail has led to a three-story beige building in the cornfields of central Illinois, to a nutritional supplement company called Proviant Technologies and what investigators believe is the true genius behind the whole operation. To a 39-year-old organic chemist who signed off...

NEW YORK (AP) - Major League Baseball is looking into Barry Bonds' relationships and activities, according to a report in the New York Daily News. Citing anonymous baseball sources, the newspaper reported in its Sunday editions that baseball security officials believe Bonds might be at risk of conviction over allegations of tax fraud. The San Francisco Giants outfielder, who has been at the center of baseball's steroid's scandal, has yet to play this season as he recovers from knee surgeries. The most recent Bonds controversy involves him using his own doctors and trainers to treat his injured right knee. The...

December 8, 2004 George Bush vs. Barry Bonds The government's effective smear campaign against baseball's best player Matt Welch The United States government has sent the impressionable Youth of America an unmistakable signal: Do not, under any circumstances, break any sporting records after adding 18 pounds of muscle at age 36. If you do, Uncle Sam will use the awesome powers at his disposal—grand jury inquisitions, illegal leaks, even the State of the Union address—to humiliate you in public and pressure your union to accept year-round random urine testing, even if you will never be charged with breaking a single...

On Sept. 3, 2003, federal agents raided the offices of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative and set off one of the biggest sports scandals in history. Now the man at the center of the scandal, Victor Conte, wants to tell his side of the story -- about giving Marion Jones performance-enhancing drugs, about helping Tim Montgomery become the world's fastest man, about supplying Barry Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, with the designer steroid THG. "Did I do things wrong? Yes. Am I the only one? No," says Conte, who has been indicted on 35 counts of steroid distribution and money laundering....

A report obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News indicates that the owner of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative told federal investigators he gave steroids to nearly 30 athletes, including Barry Bonds and track stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. According to the newspapers, the document summarizes an Internal Revenue Service investigator's interview of Victor Conte last Sept. 3 during a search of the company, at which time Conte volunteered the names of the athletes. Conte's lawyers denied the report, which reportedly lists 27 athletes -- among them Bonds, Jones, Montgomery, Kelli White and the Yankees' Jason...