Bonds Appeal

Prosecutors have appealed the judge's earlier ruling on perjury. Basically, it looks to me like the Feds don't have a case without this evidence. Anderson isn't going to testify, and if they can't introduce this evidence of Bonds' steroid use, prosecutors won't have anything to go on.

Legal Note: Normally you have to wait for a trial to be over to appeal. The idea is that if you appeal every ruling, you'd never finish the trial. Sometimes, though, you can file an interlocutory appeal, which is what this is. It's essentially a timeout in the trial.

However, this will irritate the judge, as noted in the Chronicle article. Trial was to start this week and the judge probably wants to (finally!) get rid of this case.



I predict that if the Ninth Circuit (the court that hears appeals from courts in California and other western states) doesn't allow this evidence, prosecutors will drop the case and Bonds will walk.

Bonds

The judge just tossed a lot of the evidence against Bonds for being inadmissible hearsay. For prosecutors, the problem is that Greg Anderson still isn't talking. He's the guy who could tell the story, and he's not going to say anything. (Why? Beats me.)

Is that all bad? Perjury is bad, of course, but does Bonds really deserve to go to jail? I dunno. If he does, it won't be for long. As I've said before, don't lie to the Feds.


Quick Hearsay Review: Inadmissible hearsay is evidence that exists (in this case the test results) but can't be used in court. I still remember my Evidence professor saying that hearsay is 'an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.' Here, all those test results are statements that were made outside the court, and the prosecutors are trying to use them as evidence. Hearsay actually has lots of exceptions, but apparently the judge didn't think that this evidence fell within any of them. The reason the rule exists is that we would prefer that evidence be offered by a live witness. In this case that witness would be Bonds (who can't be forced to say anything due to the Fifth Amendment) or Anderson (who won't testify).

Giants-Dodgers

My cousin and her husband, a dedicated Dodger fan, visited San Francisco and we went to the game tonight. It was a terrific game. Tied 1-1 after 8, the Giants brought in their closer Brian Wilson (wait, not him; I meant Brian Wilson, sorry). After one scoreless inning, they yanked him and brought in Tyler Walker for the 10th, who immediately gave up a homer to Jeff Kent. The Giants came back and won it, but still, there was no reason to take Wilson out. He's their closer, their best pitcher. If Billy Sadler (who?) can throw two innings, Wilson can throw two.

The pregame ceremony was cool. They had the best Giants outfielders of the last 50 years came out of the dugout. Most of them aptly reflected the quality of the Giants over the last decades (i.e. Candy Maldonado, good thing he wasn't busy). There was one spot left in the ceremony. Then they played the music from The Natural and Willie Mays slowly walked in from center field. Everyone was cheering and then Bonds suddenly strolled out from left.

I didn't clap for Bonds, but I was happy to cheer for Willie Mays. As far as I'm concerned, he should always enter the field to The Natural.

A snide person would have noted that Willie Mays came out to The Natural; the comparison with Bonds was unstated....

Fred Lewis

Fred Lewis is the replacement for Barry Bonds in left field for the Giants. I would say that he's no Barry Bonds. Then I read this, and I was right. He's no Barry Bonds.

I'm going to root for him.

New Bonds Indictment

The feds indicted Bonds again. A copy of it is here.

To review the bidding, he was first indicted in November.

What hasn't changed is the key paragraph 9:

During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other professional athletes.

Each count of the indictment points to testimony by Bonds in front of the grand jury that he didn't take steroids.

Legal sidenote: a grand jury is like a jury, except it does investigations, not trials. It's made up of ordinary people, and it sits in private, not in public. This grand jury was investigating BALCO, so it questioned all sorts of people related to that case, includikng athletes (Bonds, Tim Montgomery, Giambi, etc.)

A grand jury can give you immunity, which means that you won't be prosecuted for anything you say there, as long as you tell the truth. So if Bonds told the truth to the grand jury, even if he admitted taking steroids, he couldn't be prosecuted for it.

However, if you lie to a grand jury, they're going to come after you. Giambi's hitting prowess is vanishing, but at least he's not under criminal indictment.

More steroids

For a long time, Barry Bonds and his lawyers would insist that this whole steroids investigation was really just a ploy to "get" Bonds.

While it played well in San Francisco, it wasn't really true, and they're going to have a hard time getting anyone to believe that argument anymore.

Steroids

Baseball players are not, generally speaking, deep thinkers. Regardless of their intelligence, success in baseball requires a short memory. This is a roundabout way of saying that it's not often that one looks to baseball players for commentary on current events. Every now and again, though, they surprise me. David Ortiz said the following:

It's like they've placed that issue on the same level as Iraq. It doesn't make sense to hear people talk more about whether Barry Bonds used steroids than about people dying in Iraq.

Well said, Papi. Hope the knee heals quickly!

Bonds

Barry Bonds was indicted yesterday in federal court for lying.

It's worth noting that when he gave his grand jury testimony, he was granted immunity (paragraph 8). So if he'd told the truth, he was immune from prosecution for buying any illegal drugs/steroids/whatever. Of course, if he'd told the truth, he would be in trouble with baseball, the Giants, and perhaps to the two people he really cares about: his dad and Willie Mays.

As for the evidence, paragraph 9 is the unobtrusive hammer:

During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances for Bonds.

So they must have found positive test results for him.

What does it mean?

I don't know. One could certainly argue that he deserves to be sentenced to community service. This isn't exactly the biggest problem facing this country right now.

On the other hand, the feds may try to make an example of him. Martha Stewart served six months in the Big House for lying about a sale of stock worth $50,000. The feds don't like it when you lie to them. If they do insist on prison, it will have to be a short term. Six months at most.

Why did he lie?

I don't know. Somehow Bonds, who grew up in wealth and privilege the rest of us can barely imagine, has managed to create a worldview where he is the persecuted one. This has been very effective for him--I think it has actually fueled much of his success on the field. But it's not so effective when one is under oath to a grand jury.

756

Let me get this straight, the guy who spent $750,000 on Bonds' record breaking home run ball is going to let people vote on what he should do with it?

I'm with Barry: The guy is an idiot.

My first thought was that this guy was a real jerk, because if you're going to spend $750,000, there are plenty of good ways to spend it.

But it turns out that he's already familiar with philanthropy. This whole auction is just all for publicity.

For what it's worth, I voted to put the ball in the Hall of Fame. Like him or hate him, Bonds is important to baseball history.

Bonds

Surely Bonds will hit homer 756* this week when the Giants are at home.

There have been a bunch of articles talking about how black fans (74%) are more likely than white fans (28%) to be rooting for Bonds to break the record. (Whew! Good thing there isn't anyone else in America besides black people and white people!)

I say that's nothing. They should check the disparity between Giants fans and everyone else. Giants fans love the guy; I bet 90% are rooting for him to break the record.

Giants

For the sake of their future, the Giants really need to get rid of Bonds after this season. Or pay him a lot less. (He's mentioned that he'd like to get to 3000 hits, which would require him to play next year.)

He's costing the Giants $16 million this year, and even with Bonds in the lineup, they're only 10th in runs.

Which is a shame, because their pitching (uhhhh, the starters anyway) is good, and they have the potential for a dominating rotation in a year or two. Consider:

• Matt Cain has had some hard luck, but his ERA is almost a run under the National League average.
• Tim Lincecum is living up to the hype, so far.
• Noah Lowry (!) has been better than Cain.
• Matt ("Lazarus") Morris is the staff ace.
• Oh, and then there's Zito. I have to think he'll come around, even if for now he's the most expensive #5 starter in baseball history.

That, folks, is a rotation. For 2009, the Giants *MUST* ditch Bonds and get some hitting, because if these guys pitch anything like this, they're going to be very impressive. The team is perfectly set up to move past Bonds, but to do so they actually have to move past him.

(Oh, and Russ Ortiz, thanks for playing. Welcome to long relief, until someone gets hurt.)

Shows what I know

Well on day 1, Bonds goes out and steals second in the first inning.

Yet another demonstration of why I'm not a major league scout.

Note: Bonds was then thrown out at the plate. His excuse is good enough that I couldn't make it up.

More Bonds

Eddie thinks I'm oversimplifying and points to this site to show that moving Bonds from third to second in the batting order won't make much of a difference.

First, not to oversimplify, but Cho's wrong.

Second, wow, I consider myself a baseball fan, but that's ridiculous.

My actual argument has changed a little over the years, but it's not based on number of at bats.

Three years ago Bonds was so devastating a hitter than he would change everything in the late innings. For instance, if the Giants were down a run or two, or if the game was tied, and Bonds was up 4th in the 9th inning, the threat of having to face him with the game on the line was very disruptive. I figured that if he moved up in the lineup, it was more likely that he would get that one extra at bat in close games. For instance, if Bonds were scheduled to bat 4th in a the ninth inning instead of 6th, it would put a lot more pressure on the opposing reliever.

Today, the argument is based on his knees. It's in the Giants' best interests to have him play as few innings as possible. Realistically, there are going to be plenty of games where he's good for three at bats and then he'll leave. If they can make that third at bat happen an inning earlier, it could help him. He's sufficiently gimpy/cranky/etc. that an extra inning here and there could make a difference.

In other news, I went to the Giants game last night. The first game of the season is always fun.

(a) Zito looked good, although the game ended in about 2:10. Nobody was grinding out at bats last night.

(b) Bonds can unquestionably hit but he sure can't run. We had great seats right behind the bullpen in left field. He's capable of jogging to make a catch, but generally he just stood there. Granted it's an exhibition game, but he better hit a lot of homers because he's going to clog the bases. Not that I blame him, but if his knees are this gimpy in March, I doubt he'll play in even 130 games this year.

(c) 29,627 fans? No way, no how. MAYBE 15,000.

Bonds Bats Third

Finally! The Giants should have made this decision years ago.

As I pointed out three years ago, he should be batting second. But third is a lot smarter than cleanup.

It's been clear that *someone* on the inside was leaking the grand jury testimony to the Chronicle reporters in the Bonds steroids case.

Of all people, it was Victor Conte's former lawyer! His lawyer!

One question for Mr. Ellerman: "Excuse me, sir, how dumb are you?"

I'm going with 'extremely, extremely dumb'. It's pretty basic that grand jury testimony is confidential.

But it gets better. Not only did he leak the testimony, he then swore to the judge that he didn't do it. Ouch. And not to disparage the importance of this investigation, but this ain't exactly the Pentagon Papers here. I can't wait to hear his explanation for why he felt obliged to do this.

I see that he recently changed his law license to inactive status. That will shortly be changed again to "Disbarred."

Well, the Sox finally signed J.D. Drew. I still think it's a mistake. Too many years; he's too old and injury prone.

However, my good friend Eric Freeman, who follows baseball far more closely than I do, assures me this is a good deal. He's got a lot more PhD's than I ever will, so I suppose I have to give him some credence. Eric, I hope you're right and I'm wrong.

The Giants also signed Bonds. I think $16 million is too much money, especially for a guy who hit 26 homers last year and can't field. Zito was a great signing, but I still think the Giants will be too old and slow.

Come to think of it, the Giants would have been better spending their money on J.D. Drew instead of Bonds.

Sixteen millions of dollars for Bonds.

Will he be worth it? As Steven Colbert would say, "I don't trink so."

His numbers, are declining, but more worrisome is the decline in games played. Maybe he's good for 130 games next year. These days he doesn't have any speed, so he clogs the bases when walked, and doesn't cover much ground in left field.

As I've been saying for years, Bonds should bat second. Especially this year. Certainly no lower than third. If he batted second, it's reasonable to assume there would be plenty of games where he could get three at bats in by the 6th inning, and then come out of the game.

I wouldn't pay him $16 million. Unless they sign someone, the Giants will again be old, and I don't think they'll be very good. Bonds is plenty divisive in the clubhouse; if the team isn't winning it could get ugly. Maybe they'll make back the money in jersey sales, but I don't know.

It looks like Barry Bonds does, in fact, want to be liked. He put up a wall for as long as he could, but unknown to all of us it was affecting him. I bet he'll be back by June. The G-Men better hope he isn't out much longer--I'm starting to think the rest of the team is actually pretty good this year.

Advice for Bonds: don't be so distant. San Francisco wants to love you. The world is not out to get you, and you don't make friends in the media by pretending it is.

The US Attorney's office may be a different story. It looks to me like they're trying to get him for perjury. Why else would they bring his old mistress in? They want to go after him for the same reason they went after Martha Stewart, and Bernie Ebbers, and Frank Quattrone. They want to nail the big cheese.

Will all the steroid talk bother Barry Bonds?

Not a bit. Bonds lives in his own isolated universe, where he's convinced himself that everyone's out to get him and it's him against the world. He keeps everybody away from him and doesn't give a damn. (In the Giants lockerroom, he has his own row of lockers, his own leather recliner, his own rules.) He'll feed off the controversy. It makes him stronger. Since he's been wronged (in his mind), all the questions will just be more evidence that the world is after him.

He's a strange man. A great hitter. Obviously a steroid user. And everyone agreed that Jeff Kent was a worse teammate by far. Hmmmm.