Ahira's Hangar

Today's latest in baseball's ongoing sordid scandal:

Quote:
Sources: Bonds may be subject of perjury probe
From Ted Rowlands
CNN


Thursday, April 13, 2006; Posted: 10:43 p.m. EDT (02:43 GMT)
Federal prosecutors may be pursuing a perjury case against San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds stemming from his denials of steroid use during a federal grand jury appearance in 2003, multiple sources have told CNN.

For more than a month, a different federal grand jury has been hearing evidence about whether Bonds may have lied during his testimony on December 4, 2003, the sources told CNN.

The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco would neither confirm nor deny that a grand jury has been hearing testimony about Bonds.

Bonds' lawyers were unaware that a grand jury had been convened, said Harry Stern, a spokesman for his legal team.

Bonds, who now ranks third in career home runs, has steadfastly maintained he never knowingly used steroids. He was one of several prominent athletes called to testify as part of an investigation into BALCO, a San Francisco Bay Area laboratory accused of distributing steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

At the time, Bonds and the other athletes were given immunity by federal prosecutors, provided they told the truth on the stand.

Bonds' attorney, Mike Raines, has previously accused prosecutors of trying to set Bonds up for a perjury charge by offering him immunity to get him in front of the grand jury, then later challenging his testimony.

BALCO's founder, Victor Conte, spent four months in jail after pleading guilty to distributing illegal steroids. Greg Anderson, a long-time friend of Bonds, was sentenced to three months in jail on the same charges.

Bonds' denials came under renewed scrutiny in March with the release of the book "Game of Shadows" by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

The book alleges Bonds used steroids and other performance enhancing drugs for at least five seasons, starting in 1998, and that Anderson -- his personal trainer -- helped him obtain the drugs.

Bonds has sued the authors to try to block them from making any money on the book, which his attorneys say was based on illegally obtained grand jury transcripts.

In the wake of the controversy over "Game of Shadows," Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed George Mitchell, a former U.S. Senate majority leader and federal judge, to investigate steroid use in baseball.




What do you think of Bonds and the other players accused of using performance enhancing steriods?if guilty ban them & erase their recordsif guilty ban them & asterisk their recordsif guilty leave them & their records aloneif guilty ban them but leave their records aloneI think Bonds and others are all innocentShow results ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Sports Illustrated had a really interesting article on Bonds and Balco, excerpted from the book that just came out on this issue. Fascinating stuff.

It's really sort of sad, cause Bonds was a sure thing for the Hall of Fame before he started down that path, and now it seems unlikely that he will make it.

I don't really see how you can delete the records of all the steroid users, though. It would get really complicated and I just don't see it happening. "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"<i></i>

Steroids in baseball. So last night on the radio I hear this guy who's got his own website, walkbondseverytime.com, because if Barry Bonds is walked every time he comes to bat the records of Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth will not be put in jeopardy. Opinions?

I used to follow a sport where rumors of steroid usage and other types of enhancements have raged for years, bicycle racing. Steroid rumors followed the French cyclist Bernard Hinault for years, the American Greg Lemond had rumors about him, and Lance Armstrong has been rumored to have used steroids to aid his recovery from his cancer treatments. Another enhancement plaguing the bicycle sport has been 'blood doping', in the early 1980s Columbian and Peruvian cyclist entered the professional field. These cyclist trained in the mountains of So. America, and then when competing in Europe, they seemed to have an edge. So then blood doping became an issue, where cyclist from less mountainous terrains tried to artificially duplicate the effects of the So. American's trainng at high altitude. Checking for steroid usage among the professional cycling competitors has only come to the sport maybe since the 1980s, and the testing only detects active usage of steroid ehnacements.

Does this really have anything to do with the existing convo? taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
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live journal http://taras-wizard.livejournal.com<i></i>

So why then, didn't the bicyclists from low altitude places just start training in places with high altitudes then, rather than taking blood enhancements?

One of the problems with checking for steroids is that the drug designers seem to always be three steps ahead of the testers...they design new products faster than tests can be developed for them.

One of the best known sites for this in the now infamous Balco, where Bonds allegedly got his designer roids. Several successful Olympians also have been rumored to have gotten undetectable designer drugs from Balco. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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