It is generally understood amongst most baseball fans that despite Bonds home run totals, Henry Aaron is still the all time home run king. Most baseball fans realize that Barry Bonds was part of something that was way bigger than him, and now view him as just an extreme example of a much larger problem that permeated throughout Major League Baseball for a long time.
As a result, many people are indifferent to this trial. Many people decry the government for "wasting taxpayer money" on this rigorous investigation and indictment. I am not one of those people...
I hate to break it to the stupid and the blind out there, but the government is not going to allow anyone to commit perjury and get away with it-cost be damned. They cannot and will not allow the message that lying under oath is permissible. So please stop with the "wahhhh" routine regarding how much this trial costs because the only reason this trial is taking place at all is because Barry Bonds lied under oath when he didn't have to.
For those that need reminding, when the BALCO trial of Victor Conte was taking place in 2003 the government granted immunity to the athletes that were customers of BALCO for using the illegal drugs BALCO manufactured and distributed. The government told the athletes involved that they were only interested in prosecuting Conte, and that as long as they told the truth in their testimony they would not be prosecuted. Each of the athletes however also received a stern warning from the government prior to testifying. The warning was that their immunity was contingent upon telling the truth, and if the government suspected that anyone withheld even a shred of truth from their testimony, they would be prosecuted lock, stock, and barrel.
The only athletes who didn't take this warning seriously were Marion Jones and (you guessed it) Barry Bonds.
So yes, the only reason this trial is taking place is because unlike his contemporaries, Bonds claimed under oath that he didn't know what he was taking. Bonds claims he thought he was taking "flax seed oil" rather than steroids, and that he was never injected with anything. Obviously that is not consistent with what the other athletes testified to, nor is it consistent with what Victor Conte told the government, hence here we are.
In terms of the trial itself, I believe it's a winner for Bonds simply because the Smoking Gun in this trial isn't talking. Greg Anderson is the smoking gun. Anderson is the one who kept the logs of what Bonds was taking, how often Bonds was taking it, and Anderson was also the only person who injected Bonds with steroids and Human Growth Hormone. Without Anderson's testimony, the government has a lot of juicy hearsay, speculation, smoke and mirrors, but nothing concrete unless they have an ace in the hole somewhere.
Despite how it's likely to end, I'm still very interested in this trial. Like it or not, this is historic. The Home Run Leader is on trial for a crime for goodness sake, even though it was completely avoidable. The only reason Bonds is on trial is because he couldn't admit what everyone else already suspected or knew. Rather than be completely honest as he was required to be by law, Bonds chose to play Jeff Nowitzky, the FBI, the Grand Jury, and everyone else as fools in his game of life. From that perspective, Bonds deserves anything negative that happens to him as a result of his own stupidity in his testimony.
I have no sympathy for "Stupid". Hopefully the jury feels the same way I do.
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