Barry Bonds is back in the news
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Maybe it’s because federal investigators were assailed on Wednesday for raiding the home of the mother-in law of Barry Bonds’ trainer -- a raid that could be construed as an indication that the government lacks sufficient evidence to convict baseball’s all-time home run leader of perjury and obstruction of justice, with his trial scheduled to begin on March 2.
Or perhaps it’s a coincidence.
But during the last 24 hours, sources likely connected to the government’s case against Bonds have leaked a few key pieces of information that indicate just how strong a case prosecutors could have.
First, the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt reported after Wednesday’s raid that prosecutors have urine evidence showing Bonds had steroids in his system -- substances other than ‘the clear’ and ‘the cream’ that the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative distributed.
Today, veteran BALCO-probe journalist Mark Fainaru-Wada and his ESPN.com colleague, T.J. Quinn, reported that prosecutors’ witness list includes Bonds’ former San Francisco Giants teammate Bobby Estalella, who is prepared to say Bonds knowingly used steroids.
Bonds claimed before a federal grand jury that he did not know he was taking performance-enhancing drugs, believing he had used flaxseed oil. Those sworn statements generated this criminal case
Estalella emerged in the 2007 Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use in baseball, as a Dodgers official referred to him in one meeting as a ‘poster boy for the chemicals.’
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco said he ‘can neither confirm nor deny’ that Estalella’s name is on the witness list.
-- Lance Pugmire
