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Henderson column: Bonds Busted

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 16, 2007

Updated: 11/16/2007 12:45 am

So, a grand jury in California has added its voice to the chorus. Let us now all sing together: Barry Bonds, you're a liar.

You were asked under oath if you knowingly took steroids. You said no. The evidence says yes. That's what the grand jury decided, anyway. That's what a prosecutor will tell a jury when he tries to put you in jail.

You tried to obstruct the probe into the use of steroids by top athletes. Your attorney told the Associated Press he was surprised by the five-count indictment against you that became public late Thursday.

He has to be the only one.

Four counts of perjury. One count of obstructing justice.

This is not surprising. This is overdue.

These are big-boy charges with the potential for serious prison time.

An indictment is not a conviction, so we'll wait for a trial and all the stuff that will come out of that. But what possibly can be said now about this man that will be a revelation? All you have to do is look at Barry Bonds. No one can possibly get that large through a sensible diet and working out.

Not The Only One

He is not the only elite athlete who cheated, of course. Marion Jones finally came clean when she was backed into a legal corner. The steroid probe by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell is winding down and people expect plenty of bombshells to come from that.

But we reserve special contempt for Bonds because he was such a cynical liar, even as he chased one of baseball's most hallowed records. The smugness he displayed day after day during the baseball season didn't play so well in the grand jury room, though. Nor will it play well before a jury of his peers.

There will no doubt be calls for Commissioner Bud Selig to strip Bonds of the home-run record he set during the summer. It's an appealing thought, but my guess is that he won't do that. You can't put the cork back in the syringe, so to speak.

It's just as well. Baseball could have both its all-time hits leader and home-run king being excluded from the Hall of Fame. If Bonds is convicted and sent to prison for crimes that directly shamed the game, how could anyone vote for him? No matter how many home runs he hit.

Baseball owners deserve this for looking the other way as Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and so many others in the game bulked up to the size of a Winnebago. Players union chief Don Fehr deserves shame, too, for cynically trying to hide steroid use behind player privacy arguments. There was big money out there for guys who could hit 50 home runs a year, no matter what it took to get there. That's all he was worried about.

Yeah, everyone looked the other way when players started hitting so many home runs that pitchers had to compensate. Remember how everyone threw 95 miles an hour back in the late '90s?

If you didn't cheat it was hard to compete.

Then the message went out to college players and high school kids. Get bigger any way you can. Everybody is doing it. Fans even grew numb. Heck, it was entertaining watching all those balls fly out of the park. For a while, anyway.

Then we remembered something: Isn't it supposed to be harder than that?

Clean It Up

This indictment is the latest in a four-year grand jury probe into steroid use. To those who would ask if the government doesn't have anything better to do than harass baseball players, here's a simple response: NO!

Not when those players are trying to pass themselves off either as role models or, in the case of Bonds, as misunderstood souls being persecuted by the man.

Investigate them all. Indict them all if need be.

Thursday, it was Barry Bonds' turn to be reminded that there are rules and consequences. For way too long he has ignored them both.

That's how you become something worse than a liar.

That's how you become a felon.

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