The World According to Oatney

Baseball's black eye

Boy does baseball ever have a black eye today. After it was revealed that Jason Giambi testified in the BALCO case that he obtained steroids from Barry Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, Bonds (of the San Francisco Giants) admitted to taking steroids, but claims he did not know they were anabolic steroids!

Some background: According to published reports of testimony transcripts, Giambi claims Anderson told him not to make anyone aware where he got the stuff from.

In the transcripts obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Nedrow asked Giambi, "Did [Anderson] ever say, 'Don't be talking about getting stuff from me?'"
"That's what I mean by saying that he made it so, you know, private, that you know, 'Hey, don't say anything, don't talk about anything,'" Giambi was said to have stated to the grand jury. "You know, I assumed because he's Barry's trainer -- you know, Barry -- but he never said one time, 'This is what Barry's taking, this is what Barry's doing.' He never gave up another name that he was dealing with or doing anything with."
Giambi’s brother Jeremy also admitted to using juice from the same trainer, Bonds’ personal man.
Now Bonds finally admits he was on the juice, but says he didn’t know what the stuff was.
In fact, he claims that they (the doping agents) didn’t work.
"And I was like, to me, it didn't even work," he said. "You know me, I'm 39 years old. I'm dealing with pain. All I want is pain relief, you know? And you know, to recover, you know, night games to day games. That's it. And I didn't think the stuff worked. I was like, 'Dude, whatever,' but he was my friend.
"... If it's a steroid, it's not working," he said the grand jury.
According to some sources, these kinds of steroids are often packed in cottonseed oil or flaxseed oil containers to prevent law enforcement or the media from discovering what they are. Needless to say, I don’t buy Bonds’ assertion that he was the innocent unknowing victim for one solitary second, but that is not what is at issue here, in reality.
The real issue is that the MLBPA succeeded in keeping any substance from formally being banned. The owners have wanted to crack down on steroid use for many years, but the union simply refused to allow any banning of substances. Until 2003, any such talk was off the table as part of contract negotiations between players and owners. Thus, that means that no disciplinary action can reasonably be taken against Bonds at the baseball level, because even though these substances are against the rules now, they weren’t at the time Bonds broke the single season home run record.
The real problem in baseball is an all-powerful players union that has prevented fair play, stifled the implementation of a drug policy that would prevent what amounts to cheating, stopped a salary cap from being implemented that would help save small-market teams from collapse, ands demanded salaries so high that a family of four can’t afford decent seats to a ball game. The only way to save baseball may be another catastrophic strike in which the players’ union is finally broken.

This also raises questions about Bonds’ possible breaking of Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record, should Bonds break it. How many of those 756+ home runs (Aaron’s record is 755) were hit while Barry Bonds was on the juice?



Unless there is some major breaking story over the weekend in the world, I'll next write on Monday.


ESPN news service contributed part of the information contained in this report post.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 2:29 PM