bonds article - overblown in some places, dead on in others
The Essence of Bonds
BY D.K. Wilson
There is something inherently wrong with the federal government and its four-year investigation and now prosecution of Barry Bonds. Something is wrong about spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money - and there is no law mandating that we even pay taxes - to chase evidence to prove that Bonds lied to a grand jury. There is something wrong with a society in which individuals within that society would, en masse, express a hatred toward a man they no nothing about rather than demand that the monies they have been illegally taxed be returned to them. The mass - the ruling mob - seems to be saying that they will pay money to watch the government chase down Barry Bonds, find enough evidence to get him into a court room, and then put him on trial. Perhaps they think it's somehow the "cool" thing to do to pay for this sadistic act of watching another man's misery; again, a man none of the mob knows.
Jeff Idelson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum spoke for the mob when he agreed to take Barry Bonds' #756 home run baseball. He agreed to accept an artifact that no proper curator would accept: "Sir, would you accept the Mona Lisa? It has on her cheek the Ralph Lauren polo pony and rider trademark image, but that is representative of the sentiment of the people who have viewed other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci." A museum curator might be angry enough to have the perpetrator bodily removed.
But not Idelson. He said:
"Our preference was to have the ball donated unscathed. In this instance, we were looking past that because of its historical significance. It's an important piece of baseball in American culture."
"American culture," as Idelson says, is in this case either the corporate America of which the Bonds baseball owner - Marc Ecko - is a part; or the mob - which Ecko is also a part of (he dabbles in "the jungle" that is black urban America) - that pays good money in the way of taxes to have its pseudo-sadomasochistic fetishes fulfilled.
The part of the mob that is the press corps - most of this mob is male - is so happy Bonds had an indictment dropped on his head that they can barely contain their glee. In every corner of the country someone has written or is writing a story about how happy they are at the prospect that the Black Scourge that is Barry Bonds by any other name, might be headed to a federal prison.
I have heard enough about Bonds from journalists who have covered him to understand that he is the most complex athlete in the history of sports - not just baseball, all of sports. This is a man with a yet-to-be-unearthed past beyond that which we think we know. Sure, we know he is the son of deceased former big leaguer, Bobby Bonds; and Bonds, the elder, was said to have more talent than Willie Mays. But Bobby Bonds was, like his son, a complex man. He felt the racism around him like an empath - and it helped kill him. He played hurt but rarely let it be known just how hurt he was. He turned to alcohol and was said to be a mean drunk; you can be sure that teammates and baseball writers alike have private horror stories about this side of Bonds.
And then there was Bobby Bonds, father of a wunderkind named Barry. As a father, surely Bobby saw the talent of his son long before anyone else, but knew the talent was there and was more abundant than his own ample native abilities. Barry was forever around the clubhouse watching his dad, taking in the pain of the injuries - both physical and psychic. Since alcohol was his father's painkiller, you can be sure Barry witnessed the worst from this man he loved like nothing else. We will probably never know the degree of closeness to Bobby's alcohol-induced anger Barry endured - but it had to be, even if only once, too close for a child, any child.
At the same time Barry Bonds was privy to his father's private hell, he was privy to the inner sanctum that was and is the baseball clubhouse. Just think of the word; it is not a room where lockers for possessions are stored and where clothing is changed. Barry Bonds grew up in the place where only members were allowed. It was and is not a room, but a domicile away from the traditional domicile. It is a place where, for well over a century, men have banded together and shared the secret of their love for what they do. The word is only used in two other contexts - outside of the three major sports - and that is the country club, and a place where little boys go when they want to be far from everyone but each other.
Clubhouse. The sanctuary, the inner chamber, the ------------------ home.
It cannot be only the abstract of anger that drives Barry Bonds today to want, nearing 45 years of age, to continue to play. The clubhouse, perhaps more so than for any other baseball player in the history of the game - even Billy and Cal Ripken, even Ken Griffey, Jr. - is the only place he knows. More importantly, the clubhouse is the only place that knows him. There in the clubhouse, Barry Bonds is untouchable. Even when surrounded by the press, that part of the mob so eager to impugn him, he holds court. If he deems it, you will not get near him. If he deems it, you can be graced by his smile. If he deems it, he will regale you with introspective nuggets, or shame you to the point where you question why you do what you do.
The clubhouse is Bonds' familiar, and leaving it opens him to the world that killed his father, the world that never allowed him to endorse products for the mob, or celebrate his entrance at an awards show, or allowed him to be a gentleman for even a quarter.
And away from the clubhouse is exactly the place the mob wants Bonds. John Feinstein of the Washington Post will tell you:
When a federal grand jury indicted Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader, on Thursday on charges that he lied to a federal grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing steroids, there were cries across the land from baseball people that this was a dark day for the game.
In fact, it was a day of emancipation for all those who love baseball. Bonds has held the sport hostage for years. This summer he broke Henry Aaron's record of 755 career home runs, all the while belligerently denying charges that he is one of baseball's many steroid users.
Feinstein knows there are those who read his mob words who do not believe in his rule, so he resorts to what so many of the mob do, tell the lie - or half-truth - repeated to the point it is held by the mob to be true:
There's proof now and more coming. Sure, an indictment isn't a conviction, but those still in the "no one has proved Bonds guilty yet" camp might check the record of federal prosecutors when they bring indictments: 95 percent of those indicted are convicted.
The reality of the conviction rate, though, is much different than the mob-told story:
Currently federal prosecutors tout above a 95% conviction rate. This is primarily due to the fact that most cases never make it to trial. Most defendants end up taking a plea bargain rather then risk a potentially much greater prison sentence which could be dealt them if they actual went to trial and lost. Another factor is the empowerment and impunity given to both investigating authorities and prosecutors, along with an interesting trial maneuver called "Jury Instructions". Jury instructions are basically parameters that the judge provides the jury which can greatly affect the outcome of a verdict. [Emphasis mine]
Lets say you where being charged with a federal crime which could send you to prison for 10 years if you lost at trial, and you are being offered a 3 year prison sentence if you accept a plea bargain. If you believed you we're innocent would you still take your case to trial knowing that if by chance you lose, you may have to serve a 10 year prison sentence? Currently within the Federal prison system, you will serve at least 85% of that time.
Even within those parameters, the 95% conviction rate is suspect:
A few years ago I noticed in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics that federal defendants who stand trial are much more likely to be acquitted in a bench trial than by a jury. This seemed odd to me - I had always assumed the opposite was true. So I studied government records for federal trials between 1989 and 2002 and found a number of surprising things.
First, I found that the gap between bench acquittal rates and jury acquittal rates was quite large: over the 14 years I studied, the average conviction rate in jury cases was 84%, while judges convicted slightly more than 50% of the time. Second (using other data), I found that this gap was a recent phenomenon. Between the early 1960s and late 1980s, the conviction rates for judge and jury was roughly the same; the 20 years before that, judges actually convicted much more often than juries. [Emphasis mine]
Feinstein, who is allegedly one of the very best in his business, proves anything will be said to separate Bonds from his house.
This type of obfuscation - or laziness if he failed to fact-check at all - should be beneath a noted author such as Feinstein, or the copy editors of the Washington Post. Sadly, it is not. And Howard Bryant, who just happens to be another one-time Washington Post writer, you are wrong. This is about Barry Bonds and Barry Bonds, only. Then there's Jeff Pearlman of ESPN.com puling about how he's a baseball purist and how he has to use Barry Bonds as this shining example of a cheater to his young daughter. And there's Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
A marvelously gifted talent who has tarnished his career by showing contempt for teammates, media, the game's integrity and the truth now stands formally accused.
Thursday's federal indictment will cause Bonds' supporters to trot out well-worn excuses, mail-order legal degrees and a race-based defense of a man who has never embraced anything other than himself…
Where are the critics who derided the meticulous investigative book "Game of Shadows" as nothing more than a money grab by two San Francisco reporters, themselves once prosecuted for protecting their outstanding sources?
The much-anticipated and much-dreaded Mitchell Report is expected to come out within the next month, and every franchise trembles at what it might present. Bonds' apologists hoped Sen. George Mitchell's report would come out before any additional revelations surfaced against their hero. In that climate, Bonds would only seem the biggest drop within an ocean of cheats. Not now. Whatever follows serves as mere breakers. Bonds is the tsunami.
BB is subject to far worse than MLB's wrist slap for first-time offenders. He stands to do serious time like his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who was released Thursday after twice being incarcerated for remaining silent about his former client's training habits.
The investigation already has ensnared New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi. Giambi had enough common sense not to lie. He took a public flogging, admitted his mistake, was called before the Mitchell committee and has partially rehabilitated his reputation.
All of you - shut up. Feinstein and your half-truths - shut up. Bryant, who wrote a miserably ill-informed, biased treatment of steroids - shut up. Pearlman, who wrote a mean piece of tripe of a book about Bonds, who injects other side of the coin, liberal whining in his work - shut up.
Joe Strauss - Barry Lamar Bonds might be a self-centered asshole who doesn't give a damn about you, me, or anything other than the clubhouse, but don't use how you despise Bonds to say that race is not involved in this case; race is involved in everything in this white, male dominated society. Everything. And Strauss, no one accused Fainaru-Wada and Williams of a money grab. Everyone in the business knows how hard it is to hit the motherload from writing a book.
Theirs was a glory grab. The attempt to forever set the language of how Barry Bonds is discussed is ultimately much more valuable than hoping to generate millions from a book. Also Strauss, Greg Anderson was kept in prison because of the federal prosecution's lie that his testimony was invaluable to them. Now they openly say they had everything they needed a year ago, at least. So why was Anderson imprisoned, again? Oh, that's right, liars are lauded - when they are the government. Finally, Giambi admitted to steroid use to the grand jury (I hope), but has never, ever publicly uttered the word steroid with, "I used..." and has been ensnared in exactly nothing. So Joe, shut the hell up.
All of the above and many of their peers turn a blind eye to the fact that their entire careers have largely been built off the backs of black people - the athletes and anyone close to them. Can they comprehend that statement? It is they who act as enablers for the slave trade that is major professional sports - MLB, NFL, and NBA. These journalists who participate in the ruse protect the leagues and management at the expense of the players, protect the surly, mobbish fans at the expense of the players. They despise the fact that players are placed above them to the point where they are willing to sell their souls to the omniscient camera that is named ESPN just to be seen, just to put themselves in a position for celebrity.
See, all of them know that very little said on television is more than a soundbyte. They will rarely be allowed the time to make a profound statement on that medium, and so anything meaningful said acts as nothing more than a blip on the radar. But these writers still sell their journalistic souls to the cheapest prostitute in the land - television, the ever-for-sale whore. And those who purport to "investigate" a subject would put their mamas on trial if they thought it would bring them more notoriety.
Which one of you will stand apart from the mob? Which one of you would dare build on the nugget Mitch Albom dropped on the Sports Reporters and let it be known that the government could have brought this case to the fore a year ago but were loathe to lose the case and act as the agency who kept Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron's home run record?
The answer is --------- none of you.
In this respect the Barry Bonds case crosses generations. Young mob members and old-time mobsters alike hate what Bonds stands for. Across age lines and races there is a, "let's get this guy who got us for so long," attitude that is so destructive, so mal that it borders on collusion. That all of you invested so much time in your hate for Bonds that you failed to examine the complex nature of the most riveting figure in the history of sports means you have effectively wiped history from the big book, Every Event in Our Existence. Your hate for Bonds stole any meaningful discussion of the man from the public forum.
And you will vilify him further when he turns his back forever.
To be sure, the producers of the shows that constitute the Greatest Whore on Earth that is television can surely be assigned blame in this hate game. The editors who secretly wish they had your writing talents, who enable your hate, are to blame in this hate game. And the corporate entities that run this country - Benito would only have to venture into Wal-Mart and then watch Fox News and ESPN (the Television Show) to know that this is the form of government he once dreamed for his Italy.
It is unconscionable for these people on whom the public relies to be so misinformed, so lazy, so biased as to allow the excuse for other baseball players that because they are returning from injury, or because they received growth hormone from a dentist, or because Major League Baseball had not yet banned growth hormone use that they can be pardoned and exempt from punishment.
It is equally unconscionable for Bud Selig to say, 'we'll call them into our offices' - and then release these players without even a slap on their wrists.
And excoriate Barry Bonds.
You see, Bud Selig holds a dirty secret: Steroids were banned from the game in 1991. Did you know that John Feinstein? How about you, Howard Bryant? Jeff Pearlman, Joe Strauss, did either of you know? Do any baseball writers know? Buster Olney? Peter Gammons? Any of you? You must know this:
In 1991, Faye Vincent, commissioner of baseball at the time, issued a policy that labeled steroids illegal when taken for the purpose of enhancing performance. However, no major league testing of steroids was established, so players continued to use and reap the benefits.
If not, you couldn't have talked with ESPN.com's Tom Farrey and found this out:
In truth, steroids have been banned in baseball since 1991 -- in a policy baseball officials made little effort to publicize. A source provided a copy of the seven-page document to ESPN The Magazine on the condition of anonymity. Titled "Baseball's Drug Policy and Prevention Program," the memo was sent to all major-league clubs on June 7 of that year by then-commissioner Fay Vincent. He spelled out components of the program, and ordered, "This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids."
How about you, Bud Selig?
Selig exonerated all the recent names from the Signature Pharmacy scandal; you know, guys like Rick Ankiel, Jay Gibbons, Scott Schoeneweis, and Troy Glaus (no one asks Glaus to give up his World Series MVP award) because baseball now says it "formally" banned all performance-enhancing drugs on January 13, 2005. But there is this little tidbit from Farrey about Selig and PEDs:
On May 15, 1997, acting commissioner Bud Selig distributed a nearly identical version of the drug memo, again citing steroids and directing clubs to post the policy in clubhouses and distribute copies to players. Selig's memo also went largely ignored. "I don't remember anything being posted in the locker room on drugs, like we did with gambling," said Bob Gebhard, then the Rockies' GM. In fact, baseball's gambling policy is still prominently displayed, and it must be read annually to each player by a club employee.
Players then sign a statement affirming that they understand the rule. Does such awareness make a difference? Hard to know, but the last gambling scandal was Pete Rose in 1989. ESPN spoke to five GMs from 1997, three of whom (from the Royals, Dodgers and Rockies) couldn't recall that a steroids policy even existed -- not that it would have mattered. "I hate to say this, but it didn't do a whole lot of good to know the policy," says Herk Robinson, the Royals' GM during 1990-2000. "You weren't going [to] solve anything. You couldn't test. You couldn't walk up to a guy and say, 'What are you taking?'" That sense of futility, brought on by the union's refusal to allow drug testing, descended from Vincent, who concedes he made no effort to enforce the league's first drug rules. "We could have done a lot more lecturing, lobbying and educating," he says. "But I didn't know anything about steroids." He says steroids were included in the 1991 memo because of rumors involving one player, Jose Canseco.
The beautiful game is not the football of Europe, but the game of pass the blame. Fay Vincent did it and claimed ignorance of steroids. Vincent sounds like Donald Fehr held him and his game of baseball hostage. Fehr obviously held much of the press mob hostage, because criticisms of Vincent were few, as were the criticisms of Fehr, or the players who were widely rumored to be using steroids. Most people remember Canseco, but there wasn't a Bash Brother, there were Bash Brothers. When their forearms met at home plate, Mark McGwire's forearms were as big as Jose's.
For his part, Bud Selig continues to play the pass the blame game, though he instructed teams to post the steroid policy mandate in every clubhouse.
That's your policy, Bud. Yours.
However, if you followed the mandate set forth by Fay Vincent in 1991 you would never have had to listen to Jose Canseco light up you and your league by divulging the names of many, many of your players. But then again, there would have been no Mark McGwire chasing the home run record, no Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, no Brady Anderson or Ken Caminiti. BALCO would not have produced Jason Giambi, or T.J. Quinn and Michael O'Keefe, or Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Howard Bryant or Jeff Pearlman books.
And there would have been no Barry Bonds as we now know him.
But of course, everyone knows this. That Vincent set policy is public knowledge, yet nearly everyone brushes this policy-setting mandate aside like it was nothing more than an internal memo suggesting policy be set. Selig's 1997 re-release of Vincent's mandate - plus the fact that Selig demanded the mandate be posted in all MLB clubhouses - is illustrative of it as a reality for every MLB player, and every writer in and around the game of baseball. So if you were a baseball writer and you weren't sure of the validity of Vincent's mandate, you knew Selig was on the road to meaning business in 1997.
There is a saying that may be applied to this collective turning away from the truth to allow a lie to continue unabated: in business as well as politics, there are no accidents.
Consider this statement by Jose Canseco:
"If Major League Baseball wanted in the past to completely just sever steroids from Major League Baseball, they would have done it. Obviously, there was so much money to be made.
"And I truly believe that players' agents are involved -- definitely trainers, coaches, general managers, up to owners. They all know and they knew exactly what was going on."
Canseco should have added the federal government to his list of enablers.
Operation Equine was a steroids investigation in the early 1990s that resulted in some 70 convictions. BALCO, on the other hand, has resulted in five indictments. Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were just two of the athletes mentioned prominently by people deemed as reliable informants in the Equine investigation. Why were they not pursued, set up, arrested, and convicted like the common criminals they were?
"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?" says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine. "You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players, we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."
Randall's statement, though superficially admirable, has been proven not to be the "normal" method the government uses to pursue large-scale cases. Our nearly 40-year "drug war" and the overwhelming portion of the prison population that can be attributed to it is ample evidence of the manner in which the government attacks its illicit drug problem. In other words, the "little guys" - the users, street dealers, and middlemen - are those most scooped up and imprisoned, while the cartel heads walk freely, ensuring that tens of thousands of tons of illicit drugs are bought and sold in the United States each year.
What Randall is really saying is that there was no side benefit for the federal government at that time to pursue the athletes involved in steroids. In fact, arresting names like McGwire and Canseco, and NFL offensive lineman Tony Mandarich would have drawn the ire of a nation that, at the time, had little want for government interference in peoples' lives. The best way for Operation Equine to unfold was for the feds to do their jobs as quietly as possible, end the operation, and hope it melted away into the nation's collective memory hole.
Now, it is a shadow beacon for what we see today. Equine is either what BALCO should have been - the arrest of Victor Conte and his chemists only - or an example of yet another botched, incomplete, and ultimately unsuccessful government investigation.
Today, amidst a war gone awry, an economy teetering precariously on the verge of complete collapse, an education system that fails its children, and parents realizing they are working three times harder than their parents for ever-fewer benefits, our government needs every distraction it can muster. Rafael Palmiero's beautifully slick, uber-caucasian appearance and finger-pointing perjury rendered only Congressional head shaking, empty threat of federal charges - but, but we can't prove he was dirty when he was dirty, after all - some, "he's just a singles hitter" huff and puff by the press, and a talking to by Selig. And the false specter-scare of steroids and PEDs and Bonds is grand theater. We are sucked in like the puppet-audience in an original Mesmer show, simultaneously hypnotized and never sated, always yearning for the whip to crack again, again.
And that is the reason for an offseason of discomfort with NFL players, starring Ricky Williams, Adam "Pacman" Jones, Terry "Tank" Johnson, and the Cincinnati Bengals; followed by the morbid fascination of what will come first, Bonds breaking Aaron's record or an indictment; followed by a baseball season and postseason of PED folly; followed by ------- The Indictment.
And though this is not at all meant to be a political statement, it is foolish to omit the fact that the politics of the government's political machine are inextricably tied to the phenomenon that is Barry Bonds and the case built to kill him.
With all of this in play, the strategy is coalescing hundreds of people in disparate locales with different places of employment and different jobs, making them move in a single direction for a single purpose against a single man. It all seems so haphazard and accidental; and in a way, it is.
Yet, in another very real way, the treatment of Barry Bonds features an extreme focus so intense that it is purposeful - even if this is just a synchronistic expression of something collectively inside us seeking to scream to the heavens to hear. But if you take it all apart and examine each aspect of this - this "thing" on its own - and then piece it back together carefully, you will see the fallacy of it all.
And for those who will watch the Bonds proceedings, looking, hoping for some sense of satisfaction you will never attain, these lines are for you:
Acting stupid is contagious,
Here we are now,
Entertain us.
BY D.K. Wilson
There is something inherently wrong with the federal government and its four-year investigation and now prosecution of Barry Bonds. Something is wrong about spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money - and there is no law mandating that we even pay taxes - to chase evidence to prove that Bonds lied to a grand jury. There is something wrong with a society in which individuals within that society would, en masse, express a hatred toward a man they no nothing about rather than demand that the monies they have been illegally taxed be returned to them. The mass - the ruling mob - seems to be saying that they will pay money to watch the government chase down Barry Bonds, find enough evidence to get him into a court room, and then put him on trial. Perhaps they think it's somehow the "cool" thing to do to pay for this sadistic act of watching another man's misery; again, a man none of the mob knows.
Jeff Idelson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum spoke for the mob when he agreed to take Barry Bonds' #756 home run baseball. He agreed to accept an artifact that no proper curator would accept: "Sir, would you accept the Mona Lisa? It has on her cheek the Ralph Lauren polo pony and rider trademark image, but that is representative of the sentiment of the people who have viewed other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci." A museum curator might be angry enough to have the perpetrator bodily removed.
But not Idelson. He said:
"Our preference was to have the ball donated unscathed. In this instance, we were looking past that because of its historical significance. It's an important piece of baseball in American culture."
"American culture," as Idelson says, is in this case either the corporate America of which the Bonds baseball owner - Marc Ecko - is a part; or the mob - which Ecko is also a part of (he dabbles in "the jungle" that is black urban America) - that pays good money in the way of taxes to have its pseudo-sadomasochistic fetishes fulfilled.
The part of the mob that is the press corps - most of this mob is male - is so happy Bonds had an indictment dropped on his head that they can barely contain their glee. In every corner of the country someone has written or is writing a story about how happy they are at the prospect that the Black Scourge that is Barry Bonds by any other name, might be headed to a federal prison.
I have heard enough about Bonds from journalists who have covered him to understand that he is the most complex athlete in the history of sports - not just baseball, all of sports. This is a man with a yet-to-be-unearthed past beyond that which we think we know. Sure, we know he is the son of deceased former big leaguer, Bobby Bonds; and Bonds, the elder, was said to have more talent than Willie Mays. But Bobby Bonds was, like his son, a complex man. He felt the racism around him like an empath - and it helped kill him. He played hurt but rarely let it be known just how hurt he was. He turned to alcohol and was said to be a mean drunk; you can be sure that teammates and baseball writers alike have private horror stories about this side of Bonds.
And then there was Bobby Bonds, father of a wunderkind named Barry. As a father, surely Bobby saw the talent of his son long before anyone else, but knew the talent was there and was more abundant than his own ample native abilities. Barry was forever around the clubhouse watching his dad, taking in the pain of the injuries - both physical and psychic. Since alcohol was his father's painkiller, you can be sure Barry witnessed the worst from this man he loved like nothing else. We will probably never know the degree of closeness to Bobby's alcohol-induced anger Barry endured - but it had to be, even if only once, too close for a child, any child.
At the same time Barry Bonds was privy to his father's private hell, he was privy to the inner sanctum that was and is the baseball clubhouse. Just think of the word; it is not a room where lockers for possessions are stored and where clothing is changed. Barry Bonds grew up in the place where only members were allowed. It was and is not a room, but a domicile away from the traditional domicile. It is a place where, for well over a century, men have banded together and shared the secret of their love for what they do. The word is only used in two other contexts - outside of the three major sports - and that is the country club, and a place where little boys go when they want to be far from everyone but each other.
Clubhouse. The sanctuary, the inner chamber, the ------------------ home.
It cannot be only the abstract of anger that drives Barry Bonds today to want, nearing 45 years of age, to continue to play. The clubhouse, perhaps more so than for any other baseball player in the history of the game - even Billy and Cal Ripken, even Ken Griffey, Jr. - is the only place he knows. More importantly, the clubhouse is the only place that knows him. There in the clubhouse, Barry Bonds is untouchable. Even when surrounded by the press, that part of the mob so eager to impugn him, he holds court. If he deems it, you will not get near him. If he deems it, you can be graced by his smile. If he deems it, he will regale you with introspective nuggets, or shame you to the point where you question why you do what you do.
The clubhouse is Bonds' familiar, and leaving it opens him to the world that killed his father, the world that never allowed him to endorse products for the mob, or celebrate his entrance at an awards show, or allowed him to be a gentleman for even a quarter.
And away from the clubhouse is exactly the place the mob wants Bonds. John Feinstein of the Washington Post will tell you:
When a federal grand jury indicted Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader, on Thursday on charges that he lied to a federal grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing steroids, there were cries across the land from baseball people that this was a dark day for the game.
In fact, it was a day of emancipation for all those who love baseball. Bonds has held the sport hostage for years. This summer he broke Henry Aaron's record of 755 career home runs, all the while belligerently denying charges that he is one of baseball's many steroid users.
Feinstein knows there are those who read his mob words who do not believe in his rule, so he resorts to what so many of the mob do, tell the lie - or half-truth - repeated to the point it is held by the mob to be true:
There's proof now and more coming. Sure, an indictment isn't a conviction, but those still in the "no one has proved Bonds guilty yet" camp might check the record of federal prosecutors when they bring indictments: 95 percent of those indicted are convicted.
The reality of the conviction rate, though, is much different than the mob-told story:
Currently federal prosecutors tout above a 95% conviction rate. This is primarily due to the fact that most cases never make it to trial. Most defendants end up taking a plea bargain rather then risk a potentially much greater prison sentence which could be dealt them if they actual went to trial and lost. Another factor is the empowerment and impunity given to both investigating authorities and prosecutors, along with an interesting trial maneuver called "Jury Instructions". Jury instructions are basically parameters that the judge provides the jury which can greatly affect the outcome of a verdict. [Emphasis mine]
Lets say you where being charged with a federal crime which could send you to prison for 10 years if you lost at trial, and you are being offered a 3 year prison sentence if you accept a plea bargain. If you believed you we're innocent would you still take your case to trial knowing that if by chance you lose, you may have to serve a 10 year prison sentence? Currently within the Federal prison system, you will serve at least 85% of that time.
Even within those parameters, the 95% conviction rate is suspect:
A few years ago I noticed in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics that federal defendants who stand trial are much more likely to be acquitted in a bench trial than by a jury. This seemed odd to me - I had always assumed the opposite was true. So I studied government records for federal trials between 1989 and 2002 and found a number of surprising things.
First, I found that the gap between bench acquittal rates and jury acquittal rates was quite large: over the 14 years I studied, the average conviction rate in jury cases was 84%, while judges convicted slightly more than 50% of the time. Second (using other data), I found that this gap was a recent phenomenon. Between the early 1960s and late 1980s, the conviction rates for judge and jury was roughly the same; the 20 years before that, judges actually convicted much more often than juries. [Emphasis mine]
Feinstein, who is allegedly one of the very best in his business, proves anything will be said to separate Bonds from his house.
This type of obfuscation - or laziness if he failed to fact-check at all - should be beneath a noted author such as Feinstein, or the copy editors of the Washington Post. Sadly, it is not. And Howard Bryant, who just happens to be another one-time Washington Post writer, you are wrong. This is about Barry Bonds and Barry Bonds, only. Then there's Jeff Pearlman of ESPN.com puling about how he's a baseball purist and how he has to use Barry Bonds as this shining example of a cheater to his young daughter. And there's Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
A marvelously gifted talent who has tarnished his career by showing contempt for teammates, media, the game's integrity and the truth now stands formally accused.
Thursday's federal indictment will cause Bonds' supporters to trot out well-worn excuses, mail-order legal degrees and a race-based defense of a man who has never embraced anything other than himself…
Where are the critics who derided the meticulous investigative book "Game of Shadows" as nothing more than a money grab by two San Francisco reporters, themselves once prosecuted for protecting their outstanding sources?
The much-anticipated and much-dreaded Mitchell Report is expected to come out within the next month, and every franchise trembles at what it might present. Bonds' apologists hoped Sen. George Mitchell's report would come out before any additional revelations surfaced against their hero. In that climate, Bonds would only seem the biggest drop within an ocean of cheats. Not now. Whatever follows serves as mere breakers. Bonds is the tsunami.
BB is subject to far worse than MLB's wrist slap for first-time offenders. He stands to do serious time like his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who was released Thursday after twice being incarcerated for remaining silent about his former client's training habits.
The investigation already has ensnared New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi. Giambi had enough common sense not to lie. He took a public flogging, admitted his mistake, was called before the Mitchell committee and has partially rehabilitated his reputation.
All of you - shut up. Feinstein and your half-truths - shut up. Bryant, who wrote a miserably ill-informed, biased treatment of steroids - shut up. Pearlman, who wrote a mean piece of tripe of a book about Bonds, who injects other side of the coin, liberal whining in his work - shut up.
Joe Strauss - Barry Lamar Bonds might be a self-centered asshole who doesn't give a damn about you, me, or anything other than the clubhouse, but don't use how you despise Bonds to say that race is not involved in this case; race is involved in everything in this white, male dominated society. Everything. And Strauss, no one accused Fainaru-Wada and Williams of a money grab. Everyone in the business knows how hard it is to hit the motherload from writing a book.
Theirs was a glory grab. The attempt to forever set the language of how Barry Bonds is discussed is ultimately much more valuable than hoping to generate millions from a book. Also Strauss, Greg Anderson was kept in prison because of the federal prosecution's lie that his testimony was invaluable to them. Now they openly say they had everything they needed a year ago, at least. So why was Anderson imprisoned, again? Oh, that's right, liars are lauded - when they are the government. Finally, Giambi admitted to steroid use to the grand jury (I hope), but has never, ever publicly uttered the word steroid with, "I used..." and has been ensnared in exactly nothing. So Joe, shut the hell up.
All of the above and many of their peers turn a blind eye to the fact that their entire careers have largely been built off the backs of black people - the athletes and anyone close to them. Can they comprehend that statement? It is they who act as enablers for the slave trade that is major professional sports - MLB, NFL, and NBA. These journalists who participate in the ruse protect the leagues and management at the expense of the players, protect the surly, mobbish fans at the expense of the players. They despise the fact that players are placed above them to the point where they are willing to sell their souls to the omniscient camera that is named ESPN just to be seen, just to put themselves in a position for celebrity.
See, all of them know that very little said on television is more than a soundbyte. They will rarely be allowed the time to make a profound statement on that medium, and so anything meaningful said acts as nothing more than a blip on the radar. But these writers still sell their journalistic souls to the cheapest prostitute in the land - television, the ever-for-sale whore. And those who purport to "investigate" a subject would put their mamas on trial if they thought it would bring them more notoriety.
Which one of you will stand apart from the mob? Which one of you would dare build on the nugget Mitch Albom dropped on the Sports Reporters and let it be known that the government could have brought this case to the fore a year ago but were loathe to lose the case and act as the agency who kept Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron's home run record?
The answer is --------- none of you.
In this respect the Barry Bonds case crosses generations. Young mob members and old-time mobsters alike hate what Bonds stands for. Across age lines and races there is a, "let's get this guy who got us for so long," attitude that is so destructive, so mal that it borders on collusion. That all of you invested so much time in your hate for Bonds that you failed to examine the complex nature of the most riveting figure in the history of sports means you have effectively wiped history from the big book, Every Event in Our Existence. Your hate for Bonds stole any meaningful discussion of the man from the public forum.
And you will vilify him further when he turns his back forever.
To be sure, the producers of the shows that constitute the Greatest Whore on Earth that is television can surely be assigned blame in this hate game. The editors who secretly wish they had your writing talents, who enable your hate, are to blame in this hate game. And the corporate entities that run this country - Benito would only have to venture into Wal-Mart and then watch Fox News and ESPN (the Television Show) to know that this is the form of government he once dreamed for his Italy.
It is unconscionable for these people on whom the public relies to be so misinformed, so lazy, so biased as to allow the excuse for other baseball players that because they are returning from injury, or because they received growth hormone from a dentist, or because Major League Baseball had not yet banned growth hormone use that they can be pardoned and exempt from punishment.
It is equally unconscionable for Bud Selig to say, 'we'll call them into our offices' - and then release these players without even a slap on their wrists.
And excoriate Barry Bonds.
You see, Bud Selig holds a dirty secret: Steroids were banned from the game in 1991. Did you know that John Feinstein? How about you, Howard Bryant? Jeff Pearlman, Joe Strauss, did either of you know? Do any baseball writers know? Buster Olney? Peter Gammons? Any of you? You must know this:
In 1991, Faye Vincent, commissioner of baseball at the time, issued a policy that labeled steroids illegal when taken for the purpose of enhancing performance. However, no major league testing of steroids was established, so players continued to use and reap the benefits.
If not, you couldn't have talked with ESPN.com's Tom Farrey and found this out:
In truth, steroids have been banned in baseball since 1991 -- in a policy baseball officials made little effort to publicize. A source provided a copy of the seven-page document to ESPN The Magazine on the condition of anonymity. Titled "Baseball's Drug Policy and Prevention Program," the memo was sent to all major-league clubs on June 7 of that year by then-commissioner Fay Vincent. He spelled out components of the program, and ordered, "This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids."
How about you, Bud Selig?
Selig exonerated all the recent names from the Signature Pharmacy scandal; you know, guys like Rick Ankiel, Jay Gibbons, Scott Schoeneweis, and Troy Glaus (no one asks Glaus to give up his World Series MVP award) because baseball now says it "formally" banned all performance-enhancing drugs on January 13, 2005. But there is this little tidbit from Farrey about Selig and PEDs:
On May 15, 1997, acting commissioner Bud Selig distributed a nearly identical version of the drug memo, again citing steroids and directing clubs to post the policy in clubhouses and distribute copies to players. Selig's memo also went largely ignored. "I don't remember anything being posted in the locker room on drugs, like we did with gambling," said Bob Gebhard, then the Rockies' GM. In fact, baseball's gambling policy is still prominently displayed, and it must be read annually to each player by a club employee.
Players then sign a statement affirming that they understand the rule. Does such awareness make a difference? Hard to know, but the last gambling scandal was Pete Rose in 1989. ESPN spoke to five GMs from 1997, three of whom (from the Royals, Dodgers and Rockies) couldn't recall that a steroids policy even existed -- not that it would have mattered. "I hate to say this, but it didn't do a whole lot of good to know the policy," says Herk Robinson, the Royals' GM during 1990-2000. "You weren't going [to] solve anything. You couldn't test. You couldn't walk up to a guy and say, 'What are you taking?'" That sense of futility, brought on by the union's refusal to allow drug testing, descended from Vincent, who concedes he made no effort to enforce the league's first drug rules. "We could have done a lot more lecturing, lobbying and educating," he says. "But I didn't know anything about steroids." He says steroids were included in the 1991 memo because of rumors involving one player, Jose Canseco.
The beautiful game is not the football of Europe, but the game of pass the blame. Fay Vincent did it and claimed ignorance of steroids. Vincent sounds like Donald Fehr held him and his game of baseball hostage. Fehr obviously held much of the press mob hostage, because criticisms of Vincent were few, as were the criticisms of Fehr, or the players who were widely rumored to be using steroids. Most people remember Canseco, but there wasn't a Bash Brother, there were Bash Brothers. When their forearms met at home plate, Mark McGwire's forearms were as big as Jose's.
For his part, Bud Selig continues to play the pass the blame game, though he instructed teams to post the steroid policy mandate in every clubhouse.
That's your policy, Bud. Yours.
However, if you followed the mandate set forth by Fay Vincent in 1991 you would never have had to listen to Jose Canseco light up you and your league by divulging the names of many, many of your players. But then again, there would have been no Mark McGwire chasing the home run record, no Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, no Brady Anderson or Ken Caminiti. BALCO would not have produced Jason Giambi, or T.J. Quinn and Michael O'Keefe, or Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Howard Bryant or Jeff Pearlman books.
And there would have been no Barry Bonds as we now know him.
But of course, everyone knows this. That Vincent set policy is public knowledge, yet nearly everyone brushes this policy-setting mandate aside like it was nothing more than an internal memo suggesting policy be set. Selig's 1997 re-release of Vincent's mandate - plus the fact that Selig demanded the mandate be posted in all MLB clubhouses - is illustrative of it as a reality for every MLB player, and every writer in and around the game of baseball. So if you were a baseball writer and you weren't sure of the validity of Vincent's mandate, you knew Selig was on the road to meaning business in 1997.
There is a saying that may be applied to this collective turning away from the truth to allow a lie to continue unabated: in business as well as politics, there are no accidents.
Consider this statement by Jose Canseco:
"If Major League Baseball wanted in the past to completely just sever steroids from Major League Baseball, they would have done it. Obviously, there was so much money to be made.
"And I truly believe that players' agents are involved -- definitely trainers, coaches, general managers, up to owners. They all know and they knew exactly what was going on."
Canseco should have added the federal government to his list of enablers.
Operation Equine was a steroids investigation in the early 1990s that resulted in some 70 convictions. BALCO, on the other hand, has resulted in five indictments. Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were just two of the athletes mentioned prominently by people deemed as reliable informants in the Equine investigation. Why were they not pursued, set up, arrested, and convicted like the common criminals they were?
"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?" says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine. "You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players, we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."
Randall's statement, though superficially admirable, has been proven not to be the "normal" method the government uses to pursue large-scale cases. Our nearly 40-year "drug war" and the overwhelming portion of the prison population that can be attributed to it is ample evidence of the manner in which the government attacks its illicit drug problem. In other words, the "little guys" - the users, street dealers, and middlemen - are those most scooped up and imprisoned, while the cartel heads walk freely, ensuring that tens of thousands of tons of illicit drugs are bought and sold in the United States each year.
What Randall is really saying is that there was no side benefit for the federal government at that time to pursue the athletes involved in steroids. In fact, arresting names like McGwire and Canseco, and NFL offensive lineman Tony Mandarich would have drawn the ire of a nation that, at the time, had little want for government interference in peoples' lives. The best way for Operation Equine to unfold was for the feds to do their jobs as quietly as possible, end the operation, and hope it melted away into the nation's collective memory hole.
Now, it is a shadow beacon for what we see today. Equine is either what BALCO should have been - the arrest of Victor Conte and his chemists only - or an example of yet another botched, incomplete, and ultimately unsuccessful government investigation.
Today, amidst a war gone awry, an economy teetering precariously on the verge of complete collapse, an education system that fails its children, and parents realizing they are working three times harder than their parents for ever-fewer benefits, our government needs every distraction it can muster. Rafael Palmiero's beautifully slick, uber-caucasian appearance and finger-pointing perjury rendered only Congressional head shaking, empty threat of federal charges - but, but we can't prove he was dirty when he was dirty, after all - some, "he's just a singles hitter" huff and puff by the press, and a talking to by Selig. And the false specter-scare of steroids and PEDs and Bonds is grand theater. We are sucked in like the puppet-audience in an original Mesmer show, simultaneously hypnotized and never sated, always yearning for the whip to crack again, again.
And that is the reason for an offseason of discomfort with NFL players, starring Ricky Williams, Adam "Pacman" Jones, Terry "Tank" Johnson, and the Cincinnati Bengals; followed by the morbid fascination of what will come first, Bonds breaking Aaron's record or an indictment; followed by a baseball season and postseason of PED folly; followed by ------- The Indictment.
And though this is not at all meant to be a political statement, it is foolish to omit the fact that the politics of the government's political machine are inextricably tied to the phenomenon that is Barry Bonds and the case built to kill him.
With all of this in play, the strategy is coalescing hundreds of people in disparate locales with different places of employment and different jobs, making them move in a single direction for a single purpose against a single man. It all seems so haphazard and accidental; and in a way, it is.
Yet, in another very real way, the treatment of Barry Bonds features an extreme focus so intense that it is purposeful - even if this is just a synchronistic expression of something collectively inside us seeking to scream to the heavens to hear. But if you take it all apart and examine each aspect of this - this "thing" on its own - and then piece it back together carefully, you will see the fallacy of it all.
And for those who will watch the Bonds proceedings, looking, hoping for some sense of satisfaction you will never attain, these lines are for you:
Acting stupid is contagious,
Here we are now,
Entertain us.
posted by steph at
10:15:00 PM
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