Implications further knock Bonds – but it's still not enough

Cope Wit It
By Darrell Copeland III

THERE WAS ANOTHER significant dose of information released against Barry Bonds, Tuesday, further implicating him as a steroid user.

But what will it do for his home run records and what was once a shoe-in chance to make the Hall of Fame?

The new reports are from an upcoming book titled “Game of Shadows,” written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters.

Most people, if they weren’t already, are probably now convinced that Bonds is a steroid user after reading Fainaru-Wada’s and Williams’ book excerpts. If you are a person who only needs 99.9 percent of implicating stats to find someone guilty, then the latest release should put you over the top.

Personally, I need 100 percent proof to make such accusations, and as overwhelming as it may seem, I still can’t say that Barry Bonds took steroids … or human growth hormone … or “Cream and Clear.” All three are said to have been taken by Bonds, just not proven.

The narrative book is said to be based on more than 1,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than 200 people.

In it, Fainaru-Wada and Williams write that “more than a dozen people either had been told directly that he was using banned drugs, had seen him using the drugs with their own eyes, or had provided information that made the conclusion he was doping inescapable,” according to an excerpt in Sports Illustrated.

Without a doubt, the evidence is stacked against Bonds, but people claiming that Bonds did this or that, or heard that he has done a banned drug, just isn’t enough. Bonds has been a great baseball player since the day he entered the major leagues, so you can’t say one way or the other if his accomplishments would be different, assuming he did take performance enhancing drugs.

On Tuesday, Bonds said he would not read the book, and when asked about it, he said, “I won’t even look at it. There’s no reason to,” according to ESPN.com.

You see, that is all the proof you need. Conflicting reports coming straight from Bonds himself are just as believable as the book quotes.

In the book, Fainaru-Wade and Williams say Bonds was motivated to take the drugs by the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998, and began using the steroid Winstrol after the 1998 season.

Greg Anderson, Bonds’ personal trainer, who he met during that time after the 1998 season, is said to have kept meticulous records on Bonds’ program. The excerpt also says Bonds gulped as many as 20 pills at a time.

It is easy to put two and two together in this case, knowing Anderson had been in contact with Balco, the developers of the so-called “hidden” steroid, but that would be making an unwarranted assumption.

According to a book excerpt, Anderson told an acquaintance who was wearing a wire in 2003, “The whole thing is, everything I’ve been doing, it’s all undetectable. The stuff I have, we [Balco] created it. You can’t buy it anywhere else; you can’t get it anywhere else. You can take [it] the day of [a drug test], pee, and it comes up clear.”

That may or may not be true. The drug has never been detected before and Bonds was never mentioned in the conversation. It’s all just more of the same “he said, she said” stuff.

Enough already. There is no way, nor will there ever be a way to know for sure that Bonds took steroids without self-admittance or scientific proof. Until then, Bonds is still one of the five best baseball players to ever play the game, and is an absolute first-ballot Hall of Famer — steroids or not.

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