Carona, Bonds would be jailbirds of a feather

The two hunky guys passed each other in the yard and exchanged nods.

Normally, both might have kept going, but each seemed instinctively to realize that the other could use a friend.

Maybe it had something to do with this being the first day for both of them in federal prison.

The smaller man, more loquacious by nature, broke the ice.

“You’re Barry, right?” he asked with a crooked grin.

“Yeah,” the other man replied. “And you are?”

“Mike,” he replied. “Mike Carona. I gotta tell you, man, I hardly recognized you out of uniform.”

With that, Mike laughed and hoped that Barry would appreciate the joke. If there’s one thing that Mike had always been good at, it was working a room and making people like him.

Except that Barry didn’t laugh. At least not right away. Had this been six months earlier, he probably would have told the overly friendly stranger to go pound sand, but he’d told himself on the bus ride over to prison that he was going to make an effort to be more friendly.

So, he said, “Well, at least I’ve still got a number.”

Mike laughed at that, and gave Barry a patty-cake slug in the ribs.

“Looks like you take pretty good care of yourself,” Barry said.

“I do what I can,” Mike said. “And I know you do.” He laughed again, and this time Barry followed suit.

“How long you in for?” Mike asked.

“Looks like six months,” Barry said. “Just about the length of a baseball season, when you think about it.”

“Perjury, right?” Mike said.

“That’s what bugs me,” Barry said. “If they knew I lied about steroids, why not just nail me for abusing steroids? Instead, they set a trap and get me on perjury. What do they think someone’s going to do when they ask if you’ve done something illegal? Besides, it wasn’t even perjury about other crimes. It was just about me. I still don’t get it.”

Barry was getting worked up, and Mike was sorry he’d upset him on his first day. “Yeah, sounds like they had a bull’s-eye on you,” Mike said. “I feel the same way. I guess they like big fish like us.”

“You’re in minimum,” Barry said, “so you can’t be too bad. What’d they get you for?”

“I was the sheriff down in Orange County. Terrific gig. Parties, power -- you know the routine. I went down on something called honest-services fraud. Sounded like a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo to me, but it’s apparently about the public being entitled to honest services from its elected officials.”

Barry went silent. The notion of people expecting honest services from public figures hit a little too close to home. Funny thing was, he didn’t remember hearing a lot about that while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting all their home runs.

For an instant, he thought of saying, “Sheriff, huh? You look different out of uniform, too,” but decided against it. He liked this guy and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Maybe I got a little carried away,” Mike said. “But you know what, I figured everybody did it, and it’s not like I wasn’t doing my job.”

“Exactly!” Barry said, now more animated. “In my case, everybody was doing it. I don’t see them going to prison.”

“Nobody said life was fair,” Mike said. “We might as well make the best of it. Speaking of which, you still working out? They’ve got a super gym here.”

“Sure,” Barry said. “You need somebody to spot for you?”

“Absolutely,” Mike said.

Barry lightened up. In an odd way, he felt more relaxed and more himself in the yard than he’d felt in years. This Mike fellow seemed to understand him, seemed to know what it was like when people were out to get you.

“Can I ask you something personal?” Barry said. “You don’t have to answer.”

“Shoot,” Mike said.

“Why’d you keep doing it?”

Mike looked around, inhaled deeply, then said: “My friend, I’m guessing for the same reasons you did. It felt good, and I never thought they’d catch me.”

For Barry, that cinched it. This guy was going to become his new best friend. “When I get out of here, I’m giving you an autographed bat,” Barry said.

“One condition,” Mike said. “Only if I can make you an honorary deputy sheriff.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.