Taking Back the Los Angeles Dodgers

Dave Zirin http://www.thenation.com/blog/160162/taking-back-los-angeles-dodgers

On Friday, I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times that put forward a common-sense solution to the current ownership disaster that is the Dodgers franchise: public ownership. Last week, Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball took the unprecedented step of seizing the team from bankrupt chief executive Frank McCourt.

In my column, I asked the question: instead of now selling off this historic franchise to the highest bidder, why not allow the fans to be the new bosses? What if Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball pursued the solution—that has been so successful for the Green Bay Packers—public ownership? The Dodgers faithful could buy shares in the squad. Then—like in Green Bay—60% of concessions could go to local charities, premium tickets could be made affordable to working class Angelenos, and one of baseball’s most storied teams could repair its ruptured relationship with an alienated fan base. Let Los Angeles be a baseball town again. Let them truly be the people’s team.

It’s unlikely that Major League Baseball or the sclerotic Selig would want any of this. After all, since 1961, it’s been written explicitly in the league’s bylaws that fan ownership is as forbidden as the spitball or aluminum bats. Selig sees his number one job as protecting the profits and interests of ownership—not safeguarding the best interests of the game. Proclaiming to the world that fans can own a team and sports owners are superfluous creatures runs counter to Selig’s very DNA. In other words, I didn’t expect the suggestion to gain much traction at MLB central.

But I also didn’t expect Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn to step up to the plate and swing for the cause. Hahn, the daughter of former City Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, is now running for US Congress. The day following publication, Hahn cited my piece in the LA Times on her campaign website and issued the following statement: “The Dodgers have been previously owned by FOX and the McCourt family, it is clear that the only ones who have the teams best interest at heart are the fans. If elected to Congress, I will introduce an amended version of the ‘Give Fans A Chance Act’ which would allow Major League Baseball teams to be owned and operated by their fans, much like the Green Bay Packers are structured today.”

This is an idea whose time has come. Major League Baseball for years has relied on public subsidies to make mountainous profits. We have collectivized the debt and privatized the profit for years in operating the National Pastime. But now, as our states face historic cuts, it’s time for payback.

I spoke to 12th grade LA public school teacher Sarah Knopp, and she said,

"Just a percentage of the revenue from merchandise sales could help save the hundreds of art and music teachers being pink-slipped right now. At my small school for at-risk kids, art is one of the main tools that keeps students engaged and practicing higher-order thinking. And we're losing our art teacher. Then there’s physical education. Maybe Dodger revenue could help us to develop world-class sports programs, rather than cutting them. When I was a public school student, girls' sports were crucial for me during those formative years of self-esteem development. I'm scared that a whole generation of girls (and boys) will suffer the effects of not having those opportunities."

The only way this option could be pursued is with a tremendous amount of pressure. This pressure needs to be of two kinds: popular, fan-based pressure on Major League Baseball, and political pressure on—and through—the political powers in LA and California. People should rally, fans should hold up signs, politicians should be questioned, and every union in greater Los Angeles, should back Councilwoman Hahn's call. The Bud Selig alternative involves selling off the team to the highest bidder, with no guarantees this broken franchise would even stay in Los Angeles. Today Selig announced, that former member of the George W. Bush inner circle and Ambassador to Japan J. Thomas Schieffer would be running the team. This is not the right direction for the team or the city. The answer lies not in Bush-Land, but Green Bay.

It should be noted that this franchise was founded when it was stolen from the people of Brooklyn, Then the actual Dodgers Stadium was built on the original sin of the Chavez Ravine land grab. At that time, Chavez Ravine was a beloved residential community of Chicanos known to all as “the poor man’s Shangri La”. Shangri-La was seized by the state and handed over to owner Walter O’Malley. Second base now sits on what was once someone’s house. It’s long past time we take the team back. Doing so would rectify the past, aid the present, and maybe play a part in changing the future.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The Great American Witch-hunt

Dave Zirin http://www.thenation.com/blog/159935/great-american-witch-hunt-how-barry-bonds-became-convicted-felon

This wasn’t supposed to happen in Barack Obama’s America. We were told that these sorts of prosecutions wouldn’t be the priority of an Eric Holder Justice Department. But just as Guantanamo Bay detention centers and military tribunals have remained in place, the perjury witch-hunt trial of Major League Baseball’s home run king, Barry Lamar Bonds, continued unabated and has now reached a predictably ugly conclusion.

After seven years, and millions of dollars in court costs, Bonds has been found guilty of obstruction of justice. As for the all-important three perjury charges, the jury couldn’t agree whether Bonds lied to a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) when he swore under oath that he never knowingly took performance enhancing drugs. Without corroborating evidence from Bonds’s trainer and lifelong friend Greg Anderson, the jury could was deadlocked and the Judge declared a mistrial on all perjury charges. But the obstruction of justice conviction makes Bonds a convicted felon, and sets him up for a May 20th hearing where he could get as many as 10 years behind bars.

What did Bonds do to “obstruct justice”? According to one juror, “Steve,” the obstruction of justice charge was reached because, "The whole grand jury testimony was a series of evasive answers. There were pointed questions that were asked two or three or four different ways that never got clearly answered. That's how we came to that.'' Wow. Apparently, a “series of evasive answers” lines you up for a 10-year sentence behind bars. By that standard, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby should be breaking rocks in Leavenworth for their performance at the Valerie Plame trial.

As BALCO founder Victor Conte - who is no friend of Bonds - said to USA Today, "This verdict absolutely makes no sense to me. Of all of these counts, the one that makes the least sense to me is the obstruction charge. Tell me how there was obstruction of justice. This is all about the selected persecution of Barry Bonds. This is not fair. I was the heavy in this. I accepted full responsibility and the consequences and went to prison. How is that obstruction? Doesn't make sense.”

It doesn’t. After all the public money, drama, and hysterics, this is what we’re left with. He was “evasive." Keep in mind that we live in a country where the US Department of Justice has not pursued one person for the investment banking fraud that cratered the US economy in 2008. Not one indictment has been issued to a single Bush official on charges of ordering torture or lying to provoke an invasion of Iraq. Instead, we get farcical reality television like the US vs Barry Bonds.

This was a trial where you longed for the somber dignity of a Judge Judy. Since Anderson wouldn’t talk, the government was left with two real witnesses: Kimberly Bell, Bonds mistress, brought in to discuss his sexual dysfunctions resulting from steroids, and Steve Hoskins, the business manager whom Bonds fired for alleged theft and fraud. But their real star was a once-anonymous IRS official named Jeff Novitsky, who has proudly seen Bonds as an all-consuming obsession, U.S. Constitution be damned.

ESPN legal expert Lester Munson described the verdict as “a major triumph for federal agent Jeff Novitzky.” That alone should chill our bones. Without a warrant, Novitzky started his BALCO investigation by rooting through Victor Conte’s trash and taking it back to his house to sift through in his leisure hours. But Conte was a nothing to Novitzky. From the beginning, his sights were on Barry Bonds.

Jonathan Littman of Yahoo! Sports wrote, “two agents working on the case knew that Novitzky ‘hated' Bonds, and heard him brag about his hopes to cash in on a book deal. The agents demanded to see copies of his reports and were rebuffed by federal officials. Novitzky, however, was given carte blanche by the head of the IRS to drop the normal duties of an IRS agent -- investigating tax fraud and money laundering -- and became our de facto national sports doping czar.”

In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, Novitsky marched into the offices of sports-drug testing monolith Comprehensive Drug Testing. Carrying a warrant which authorized him to see the sealed drug tests of just ten baseball players, he paraded out with 4,000 supposedly confidential medical files, including records for every baseball player in the Major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN the Magazine, "Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky's actions a 'callous disregard' for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence..."

During closing arguments, Bonds’s attorney, Cristina Arguedas, looked at the jury as she pointed at the prosecution, accused them of misconduct and asked, "Why are we even here?"

It’s a good question. But asking the question is much safer than answering it. We’re here because Major League Baseball and the US government has long decided that Barry Bonds would shoulder the burden for the steroid era. We’re here because a surly Black athlete who thinks that the press is just a step above vermin was easy pickings for an industry rife with systemic corruption. Major League Baseball made billions off of the steroid era, an era many now see as a rancid, tainted lie. It was an era where owners became obscenely wealthy and billions in public funds were spent on ballparks. The press cheered and America dug the long ball. Now the dust has cleared, our cities have been looted, Barry Bonds could be going to prison, and Commissioner Bud Selig still has a job - and a RAISE. With apologies to Harvey Dent, this is the story of the Black athlete today: die a hero or live long enough to be a villain. And the men in the suits walk – or in Selig’s case, slouch - all the way to the bank.

Around the start of the trial, nearly a decade ago, Bonds said, "This is something we, as African-American athletes, live with every day. I don't need a headline that says, 'Bonds says there's racism in the game of baseball.' We all know it. It's just that some people don't want to admit it. They're going to play dumb like they don't know what the hell is going on." We shouldn’t play dumb either. Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder said words to the effect that the US government would no longer be in the steroid-inspection business. Like so much else in the last two years, it was just words.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall

In struggle and sports

Dave Z

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/21/2010-08-21_opinion_roger_clemens_is_no_saint_but_baseball_owners_executives_need_to_be_held.html

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall
by Dave Zirin

Roger Clemens is about as popular in baseball circles as jock itch. The man is such a pariah, he makes Barry Bonds look like Justin Bieber. Yet we should hold the cheers over the recent news that Clemens has been indicted on perjury charges for lying in front of Congress on questions related his much-denied steroid use.

However, the real question here is: Why Clemens was dragged in front of Congress in the first place? We can ask the same of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and all the players who have been put under the congressional hot lights. To put it bluntly, why have players, and not team owners, been given the third degree? Not one owner has ever been called to account for the steroid era in Major League Baseball. Not one person who has called an owner's box home has had to answer questions about steroid use.

This would be akin to investigating the oil rig workers after the Deepwater Horizon spill, but leaving BP bigwigs untouched. Yes, individual players may have made terrible personal decisions that sullied the game. But there's a systemic problem here, too. And the absence of corporate accountability around this issue is simply breathtaking.

In February 2005, Major League Commissioner Bud Selig — a former team owner himself — made the following statement about steroids: "I [had]never heard about it." That strains credulity to the breaking point. As sports writer D.K. Wilson has noted, "General managers know if a star player reported to spring training at 185 lbs. one season and 215 the next, and whether that newly added 30 pounds was fat or muscle, or a combination of both. As does the team owner — or at least one who's not asleep in the executive suite."

The issue of performance enhancing drugs had been discussed at Major League Baseball's winter ownership meetings as far back as 1988. Assuming he was awake at these meetings, Selig — then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers — would have heard the words of former Cleveland Indians trainer Brent Starr.

"Here's the thing that really bothers me," Starr said in 2007. "They sit there, meaning the commissioners office, Bud Selig and that group...They sit there and say, ‘Well, now that we know that this happened were going to do something about it.' I have notes from the Winter Meetings where the owners group and the players association sat in meetings with the team physicians and team trainers. I was there. And team physicians stood up and said, ‘Look, we need to do something about this. We've got a problem here if we don't do something about it. That was in 1988.'"

The roots of the current crisis lie not in the individual moral failings of players like Clemens, but from systemic greed at the highest levels of the sport. The juicing of the game began in earnest in 1994, when a players' strike mutated into an owners lockout that led to the cancellation of the World Series. The popularity of what was once "America's pastime" sank to a shameful low.

Then, the muscles started coming in — and the bucks along with them. The protracted pitching battles of old were replaced by games that were essentially home run derbies. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were, briefly, the heroes of the day. And so, helped by steroids, baseball came back into fashion as a new, juiced-up sport of A-Rod clones. Steroids were simply a quiet part of the marketing plan.

Therefore, despite your personal views on Roger Clemens, it must be acknowledged that the steroid era has been, to paraphrase a famous quote about the criminal justice system, like a magical fishing night that captures the minnows while the whales go free. Even when the minnows are as unpleasant as Clemens, this fundamental truth must be acknowledged.

Zirin is author of the new book "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." He is also, tragically, a Mets fan.

A-Rod, Anabolic Agonist Sports

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/zirin

A-Rod, Anabolic Agonist Sports
By Dave Zirin
February 9, 2009

Should we pity Alex Rodriguez? The three-time MVP, owed $275 million over the next nine years, has been exposed as a steroid user, the latest in Major League Baseball's endless series of anabolic agonists. The creative minds at the New York Post summed up the mood of the moment with one blaring headline: "A-Fraud." ESPN senior writer Jayson Stark was no less overwrought; his headline proclaimed, "A- Rod Has Destroyed Game's History."

However, the list of frauds and history defamers extends far beyond the Yankee third baseman. Before we gather the torches and pitchforks, let us round up some of the real villains. When it comes to steroids, no one, as A-Rod's alleged paramour Madonna might say, is like a virgin. For instance, there's league commissioner Bud Selig, who touted A-Rod as the man who would replace the "unclean" Barry Bonds as the all-time leader in home runs. Then there is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Once arguably the most powerful union in the United States, the MLBPA has in its possession the infamous list of 104 players tested in 2003. That year a deal between the owners and the union was supposed to be based on anonymity and trust. If more than 5 percent of the players tested positive, more testing with suspensions would ensue. The union promised its members that it would destroy the list. Instead it inexplicably held onto the list long enough for the government to seize it for the BALCO investigations.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Steinbrenner family also have anabolic egg on their faces. They were depending on A-Rod to be the cherry atop the sundae of the new billion-dollar Yankee Stadium expected to open this year. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have gone into this public works project, with specious promises of economic renewal. Now it may just set the stage for a season-long, agonizing fall from grace.

Finally, there are the owners-at-large, who have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport. Stark, in his piece blaming A-Rod for shredding the very fabric of baseball history, writes:

In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't even understand: a crime against the once-proud history of his sport.

What Stark and his misguided minions ignore is that if we are upset about the way numbers and hallowed records have become cheapened over the past fifteen years, ownership is the problem--and it extends far beyond steroids.

Owners actually had a multifaceted strategy to try to make baseball more like beer-league softball--and it was about as subtle as a tabloid's back page. As legendary baseball writer Bob Klapisch said, "Somewhere someone decided that baseball needed more runs. It was made at a very fundamental level. And little by little, step by step, this became the new reality. There has been too much to write it off as coincidence."

The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past twenty years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States. They are supposed to be fan-friendly--that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.

Then there are the balls and bats. Countless baseball insiders believe that the ball is now wound tighter than it was twenty years ago. As for the bats, as recently as fifteen years ago, players used untreated ash bats. Now the bats are maple and lacquered. That means the ball goes farther.

Then there is the strike zone. The area where a pitched ball can be called a strike has shrunk, in the words of retired pitcher Greg Maddux, to "the size of a postage stamp." The owners consciously engineered this trend toward the microscopic strike zone. When umpires refused to agree to a uniform strike zone, Major League Baseball crushed their union and instituted a machine to monitor their abilities. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, "The loss of the high strike has changed the game more than any pill."

But an equally big reason home run numbers are up is that the game finally shed its nineteenth-century view of strength conditioning. The training standard until the 1990s was that if Joe "Ducky" Medwick didn't do it in the '30s, then it shouldn't be done. For example, it has been the conventional wisdom for most of baseball's history that weightlifting would destroy your swing. Many teams even fined or suspended players if they were caught pumping iron. Weightlifting is now as much a part of every team's regimen as shagging fly balls.

Alex Rodriguez is set to be the next former slugger torn to pieces by columnists, fans and the sports radio blabbocracy. They all need to crack open some Michael Phelps medicinal magic and relax. Rodriguez may not deserve your pity, but he hardly deserves your scorn. Reserve that for the owners, political leaders and Bud the commissioner--who robbed our cities blind and distracted us with dingers so we wouldn't notice.

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, SportsIllustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.

Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Positive Drug Tests in Bonds Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/sports/baseball/05bonds.html

February 5, 2009
Positive Drug Tests in Bonds Case
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

The government’s perjury case against Barry Bonds gained vivid detail on Wednesday when more than 200 pages of evidence were unsealed. The pages included documents tying Bonds to four positive tests for steroids, calendars that prosecutors described as doping schedules, and a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Bonds’s former trainer is quoted as saying that he injected Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs.

Three urine samples that were sent for testing in 2000 and 2001 by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative showed the presence of anabolic steroids, according to the documents. A fourth test from a 2003 sample collected by Major League Baseball showed the presence of the designer steroid THG, the fertility drug clomid and a form of testosterone not naturally produced by the body.

When tested under Major League Baseball’s program, that sample came back negative for performance-enhancing drugs. But after the sample was seized in a 2004 raid by federal agents, it was retested by the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, with a different and, for Bonds, potentially troublesome result.

Not all of the information provided in the unsealed documents is new. But the documents provide a more complete portrait of the evidence that federal prosecutors have gathered on Bonds since the investigation of Balco began in 2002. Bonds is scheduled to go on trial March 2 in San Francisco on charges that he committed perjury in 2003 when he told the grand jury investigating Balco that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds’s lawyers filed a motion two weeks ago to have much of the evidence in the case excluded, arguing that it could not be authenticated. As part of that motion, the defense lawyers filed the evidence in dispute under seal, not wishing for it to be revealed. But United States District Judge Susan Illston ordered that it be made public and has scheduled a hearing for Thursday about its admissibility.

“While it may seem damning now, the judge may exclude a lot of the evidence and it may never make it before the jury,” said Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, in assessing the new information about the case. “But with all the attention being given to the case, the judge is going to have to be extra careful that the jury she seats has not been prejudiced by this information.”

Among the most intriguing sections in the unsealed documents is a description of what authorities said was a tape-recorded conversation, made in 2003, between Bonds’s former business manager, Steve Hoskins, and Bonds’s longtime trainer, Greg Anderson. Anderson spent more than a year in prison on contempt-of-court charges for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating Bonds.

According to a summary of the tape and a partial transcript, Anderson told Hoskins that he had injected Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs and that they were not detectable under baseball’s drug-testing program at the time. Anderson also told Hoskins that he had advance notice of when the drug tests would be conducted.

“I’ll know like probably a week in advance, or two weeks in advance,” Anderson is quoted as telling Hoskins in the transcript. According to the documents, Hoskins was recording the conversation, which took place in the Giants’ clubhouse, because Bonds’s father, Bobby, did not believe his son was using steroids.

Hoskins and Bonds were childhood friends who became particularly close after Bonds returned to San Francisco to play for the Giants in 1993. The two had a falling out in 2003 and Hoskins later cooperated with federal authorities, telling them that Bonds flew into “roid rages.” In the partial transcript, Hoskins is quoted as asking Anderson if the drugs being given to Bonds were the same “that Marion Jones and them were using.”

“Yeah, same stuff, the same stuff that worked at the Olympics,” Anderson is quoted as saying.

And, Anderson added for emphasis, Olympians were tested every week. “So that’s why I know it works,” Anderson is quoted as saying. (Jones, an Olympic gold-medal winner, pleaded guilty in 2007 to making false statements about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and received a six-month prison sentence.)

Although the results of the three urine samples that Balco tested in 2000 and 2001 do not have Bonds’s name on them, prosecutors say they can be connected to handwritten notes seized at Balco and Anderson’s home in 2003. Those notes display the names of Bonds and other individuals and numbers that, prosecutors say, correlate to samples that Balco sent for drug testing. Prosecutors contend that the three tests show Bonds tested positive for two steroids — methenolone and nandrolone — in November 2000 and February 2001.

But in their 28-page motion to exclude evidence, Bonds’s lawyers said: “It appears that as to every proffered test result, the government can attempt to link Mr. Bonds to the sample in question only through purported hearsay statement of Anderson.”

In all, five pages of handwritten notes are attributed to Anderson, and in disputing them, the defense states: “The notes are barely comprehensible. Their author(s) are unknown as are the time and purpose of their preparation.”

The defense lawyers said the notes were indicative “of the government’s zeal to convict Mr. Bonds by any means at all.” They also said the doping calendars, which the prosecutors say Anderson created so he could monitor Bonds’s use of drugs, should not be admissible, either.

The fourth positive steroid test cited in the documents does not involve Anderson or his notes. Instead, it stems from the anonymous drug tests that were conducted by Major League Baseball in 2003, the first year of steroid testing on the major league level. There were no penalties for positive results, and not even the players were supposed to know how their tests came out.

Bonds’s urine sample did not produce a positive test under baseball’s guidelines. But in a raid in 2004, authorities seized the samples and test results of Bonds and the nine other players who had testified before the Balco grand jury. Two years later, the U.C.L.A. laboratory that retested Bonds’s sample concluded that it contained the designer steroid THG, known as “the clear”; clomid, an anti-estrogen drug used to stimulate natural testosterone levels; and the presence of testosterone not naturally made by the body.

Baseball did not test for THG in 2003 and did not begin testing for clomid until the 2007 season. Why Bonds did not test positive for testosterone in 2003 is not clear.

When Bonds testified before the Balco grand jury in 2003, he said that he had used the “clear” and the “cream,” a lotion with epitestosterone and testosterone, but did not believe they were performance-enhancing drugs. He said he believed the “clear” was flaxseed oil and that the “cream” was a balm for arthritis. He said he used the “cream” sparingly.

The New York Times reported last week that federal authorities had detected a steroid other than the “clear” and the “cream” in a urine sample from Bonds. The documents unsealed Wednesday said that testosterone had been detected in Bonds’s 2003 sample, but did not say whether the source was the “cream” or another anabolic steroid.

“You cannot tell from a urine analysis whether a person has used the cream or has been using other sources of testosterone, like gels, patches or injectables,” said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an antidoping expert and member of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The documents also included a 2006 letter from Commissioner Bud Selig to Bonds notifying him of a first-time positive test for amphetamines, which does not result in a suspension. The test result does not appear to be directly related to the perjury case.

Photo could tie Clemens to Canseco's party

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/5563210.html

Feb. 22, 2008, 8:10PM
THE MITCHELL REPORT
Photo could tie Clemens to Canseco's party
By JOSE DE JESUS ORTIZ
Houston Chronicle

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Brian McNamee's lawyers have informed the Justice Department that there is a picture that was supposedly taken of Roger Clemens at Jose Canseco's Miami home during a 1998 party that has become a central point of contention in the aftermath of the Mitchell Report.

"I think the Justice Department will get the picture or pictures," McNamee's New York-based attorney, Richard Emery, told the Chronicle via phone. "And perhaps the congressional (House Oversight and Government Reform) Committee will get them, too. I have not seen the picture. I do believe the people who have the picture are credible and acting responsibly."

In the Mitchell Report, which was prepared by former Sen. George Mitchell and released Dec. 13, McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, claimed he discussed steroids with the embattled pitcher not long after the June 1998 party at Canseco's home.

Clemens and Canseco were teammates with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998, and McNamee has claimed Clemens attended the party Canseco threw for his teammates while they were in town to play an interleague series against the Florida Marlins.

"This is a very respectful, decent upstanding family," Emery said of the family who reportedly have the picture.

According to Emery young man who was about 10 or 11 years old at the time attended the party and took a picture with Clemens.

"The boy remembers the party," Emery said. "He's 10 years older now, but it was the only time he was ever at Canseco's house. And all the baseball players were there. It was a big event in this kid's life. He has this picture on his wall, both pictures on his wall. He kept those pictures.

"The mother remembers dropping him off at 1:30 and picking him up two hours later. And Clemens was still at the party. It was very clear, but they didn't want to give us the picture because they were all concerned. Apparently he's a baseball player in college, draft-eligible perhaps. They were very worried about this picture affecting this kid's life."

According to a person who has spoken to the young man's family, he is from Florida and playing baseball in college. Emery declined to divulge the man's name.

McNamee claimed to Mitchell's investigators that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone multiple times. He also claimed he gave performance-enhancing drugs to Deer Park's Andy Pettitte and Bellaire High graduate Chuck Knoblauch, two of Clemens' former New York Yankees teammates who also trained with McNamee.

Pettitte and Knoblauch, who were called in for depositions by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have admitted to McNamee's claims. Pettitte went a step further, admitting he also used HGH in 2004 with the Astros after receiving the drug from his father, Tom.

Pettitte also held a news conference in Tampa, Fla., on Monday, apologizing to his fans and former teammates for using HGH and for lying about the use earlier. Clemens has fiercely McNamee's claims, even denying that he took steroids or HGH while testifying under oath on Feb. 13 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Not long after the Mitchell Report was released, Clemens' attorney, Rusty Hardin, questioned the methodology Mitchell used in preparing the report, which was commissioned by Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig. Joe Householder, Hardin's spokesman on the Clemens matter, even chastised reporters from around the country often for not investigating McNamee's claims about Clemens being at Canseco's party.

On Friday, however, the New York Daily News first reported that the man has the picture of Clemens at that June 1998 party. Reached in Hawaii, where he was giving a speech to a trade group, Hardin didn't want to comment on the Daily News' report.

"It's impossible for us to intelligently comment on it until we see any photos that may exist," Hardin said. "I do know that TV baseball announcers at the time and Jose Canseco have all said that Roger was not at the party."

Canseco's party has been a central theme used by Clemens' supporters to undermine the credibility of the Mitchell Report and McNamee. Last week before the congressional hearing in which McNamee and Clemens testified, Hardin presented the House Oversight and Government Reform committee an affidavit from Canseco claiming Clemens wasn't at the party.

Clemens' lawyers also presented the committee with a receipt of greens fees showing Clemens golfed near Canseco's home that day. Moreover, they handed over video footage of announcers saying how the righthander had not attended the party.

McNamee stuck by his claims during last week's hearing, telling the committee that he remembered seeing Clemens' nanny run after one of the 11-time All-Star's children near Canseco's pool during that party. McNamee even described the bikini the nanny was wearing.

The committee asked Clemens' lawyers for the nanny's name and phone number on Feb. 8. Two days later, Clemens had her at his home even though the two hadn't seen each other in years. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., reprimanded Clemens during the hearing for inviting the nanny to his home in Memorial before giving the committee her number.

"Was it your idea to meet with her before forwarding her name to us, or did someone suggest that to you?" Waxman asked Clemens during the hearing, prompting Hardin and Clemens' D.C. lawyer, Lanny Breuer, to protest at the insinuation of possible witness tampering.

"Mr. Chairman, I was doing you all a favor," Clemens replied.

At those hearings, McNamee took the most vicious criticism from Dan Burton, R-Ind.

"I know one thing I don't believe, and that's you," Burton told McNamee at the hearings during one of his many statements implying that the former trainer was a liar.

Burton's comments may have helped inspire the young man's family to contact McNamee's lawyers about the photo. Emery also claims that the family with the picture first contacted Hardin on Feb. 12 to tell him about its existence.

"On the 12th of February when they read that Rusty Hardin and Roger Clemens were asserting that Roger Clemens wasn't at the party, they called Rusty Hardin," Emery said. "Then they watched the hearing. They weren't going to do anything. Then they watched the hearing.

"When Dan Burton started harassing Brian McNamee, they were offended by that. The day after the hearing or two days after, they contacted us, and we spoke to them extensively. They told us about the picture and said they felt bad about the way McNamee was treated."

Clemens filed a defamation suit against McNamee in early January. There remains a possibility that Waxman's committee could ask the Department of Justice to investigate whether Clemens perjured himself last week at the hearings and earlier in his deposition to the committee.

Hardin, who is expected to attend a wedding in Florida on Saturday, said he doesn't expect to be back at his Houston office until Tuesday.

jesus.ortiz@chron.com

Rocker says baseball knew he was using steroids

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3241448

February 12, 2008
Controversial Rocker says baseball knew he was using steroids

Former major league pitcher John Rocker said Monday that baseball commissioner Bud Selig knew he failed a drug test in 2000 and that doctors for the "league" and the "players association" advised him and several Texas Rangers teammates on how to effectively use steroids.

Rocker, no stranger to controversy, made those comments on Atlanta radio station Rock 100.5.

Later Monday, he told Atlanta sports talk radio station 680 The Fan that "between 40 to 50 percent of baseball players are on steroids" and "in 2000 Bud Selig knew John Rocker was taking the juice."

Last March, Rocker told ESPN Radio that, by his own guess, "less than 10 percent" of players were using illegal performance-enhancing substances while he was in the majors.

"Basically it's a lot of media propaganda. It's a great scandal to drive ratings and sell newspapers," he said in March 2007.

Rocker was suspended for the first 14 days of the 2000 season by Selig for making racial and ethnic remarks the commissioner deemed insensitive. The penalty, originally set to cover 28 days, was reduced by an arbitrator following a grievance.

"As part of the disciplinary process, Mr. Rocker was referred to the confidential Employee Assistance Program," Major League Baseball said in a statement. "Any test of Mr. Rocker would have been conducted by professionals who ran the EAP. Those professionals were obligated to maintain the confidentiality of the result and to use it in developing a treatment and education program for Mr. Rocker. Further discipline was not an option legally available to Major League Baseball at that time."

In a later interview Monday with ESPN Radio's "The Pulse", Rocker said he came forward now because of the Mitchell report and said Selig was trying to "pass the buck" for things he knew to the report's author, former Sen. George Mitchell.

"Bud Selig knew this was going on," he said. "I failed the test, yet nobody heard about it."

Reached Monday by ESPN, Rangers executive vice president of communications Jim Sundberg said the Rangers will have no comment.

Rocker's name was mentioned in the report delivered by Sen. Mitchell regarding baseball and performance-enhancing substances in December.

The report cited a Sports Illustrated story that said "according to the Applied Pharmacy Services database, former pitcher John Rocker received two prescriptions for human growth hormone (somatropin) between April and July 2003. Rocker initially denied the allegations, but his spokesperson later reportedly said that Rocker had been prescribed human growth hormone in connection with shoulder surgery."

Rocker denied using HGH during his big league career in a March 7, 2007 interview with ESPN Radio.

"I never had a prescription for any HGH. If somebody's got a beef to make with me, show me a prescription," he said.

A day earlier, Rocker's publicist, Debi Curzio, said Rocker had purchased HGH, but only for medical reasons. Rocker said he was directed to purchase over the counter supplements before he had shoulder surgery in 2003.

"I was trying to pitch all the way up until a week before I had my surgery. And obviously feeling as bad as I was, I called every doctor I could [to find out] what can I do to strengthen my shoulder and give me more arm strength,' he said. "Every one of them said go to a GNC, buy something over the counter, human growth hormone, these very several amino acids ... basically [that] is the way its done."

"Did you take anything that you did not buy over the counter?" ESPN Radio host Erik Kuselias asked Rocker.

"Absolutely not," Rocker said.

In 2000, MLB had no drug-testing policy for major-league players, and it is unclear whether drug testing was ordered for Rocker during that season.

Rocker was a member of the Atlanta Braves that season. He appeared in 59 games, going 1-2 with a 2.89 ERA and 24 saves. A year earlier, he had a career-high 38 saves for the Braves.

Rocker played in 30 games for Texas in 2002, throwing 24 1/3 innings.

Rocker's controversial past includes a 1999 Sports Illustrated story, where he was quoted as saying he would never play for a New York team because he didn't want to ride a subway train "next to some queer with AIDS." He also mocked foreigners and described an unnamed Latin teammate as a "fat monkey." Rocker later issued a statement admitting he went too far and told ESPN that his comments made him sound like "a complete jerk." Rocker was later suspended until May 1, 2000, and fined $20,000.

Rocker apologized for making anti-gay statements he made at a Dallas restaurant in 2002.

Rocker last played in the major leagues in 2003 for Texas. He appeared in two games.

He tried to come back in 2005 in the minor leagues, but later quit. That year, he told ESPN.com: "I've taken a lot of crap from a lot of people. Probably more than anybody in the history of this sport. I know Hank [Aaron] and Jackie [Robinson] took a good deal of crap, but I guarantee it wasn't for six years. I just keep thinking: How much more am I supposed to take?"

A dark day for the game

http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-mitchell14dec14,0,1058154,full.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-sports

A dark day for the game
Mitchell names 86 players as users and spreads blame for 'steroid era'
By Bill Shaikin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 14, 2007

NEW YORK -- — In a blow to the reputations of baseball legends, journeymen players, team owners and union representatives, an investigative report on drug use in the major leagues released Thursday by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell blasted America's pastime for its slow and ineffective response to what it called "baseball's steroid era."

The 409-page report released here amid great fanfare and serial news conferences cited performance-enhancing drugs as a widespread problem that involved players from each of the 30 teams in both the National and American Leagues.

Mitchell named 86 current and former professional players as drug users, saying they ranged from those "whose major league careers were brief to potential members of the Baseball Hall of Fame." But it was that group of big names that turned Mitchell's report into an instant sensation and one of the biggest scandals in modern U.S. sports.

Among the report's disclosures were:

Seven-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Roger Clemens repeatedly used steroids and human growth hormone, injected by his conditioning coach. The same conditioning coach, Brian McNamee, also provided human growth hormone to Clemens' New York Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte, who wanted to speed recovery from an elbow injury.

Former Angels and Boston Red Sox slugger Mo Vaughn, a one-time American League Most Valuable Player, acquired human growth hormone when he was recuperating from a serious ankle injury. The report reproduced copies of checks for $3,200 and $2,200 written to a trainer who provided the hormones.

Former Dodgers relief pitching ace Eric Gagne had human growth hormone shipped directly to the clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. And former Dodgers catcher and fan favorite Paul Lo Duca thanked his drug supplier with a handwritten note on Dodger Stadium stationery.

Adding to the impact of Mitchell's report was his extensive use of canceled checks and other documents, among them internal correspondence from front offices in Los Angeles and Boston indicating that management knew about drug use and took it into consideration during trade talks.

"Everyone involved in baseball -- the commissioner, club officials, the players' association and the players -- shares responsibility," Mitchell said.

Mitchell urged baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to grant amnesty to players in the interest of moving forward, but Selig pointedly reserved the right to suspend any active players cited by Mitchell.

Selig, who appointed Mitchell to conduct the investigation, had hoped the report would satisfy congressional critics pressing for reform. However, within two hours of its release, Selig was summoned for hearings before two committees in the House of Representatives.

Critics sounded off from all sides.

Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin issued a statement denying the pitcher used steroids and all but threatening a lawsuit. The Houston attorney said: "There has never been one shred of tangible evidence that he ever used these substances and yet he is being slandered today."

Hardin also complained that Clemens has "no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are totally false allegations. He has not been charged with anything, he will not be charged with anything and yet he is being tried in the court of public opinion with no recourse. That is totally wrong."

Jose Canseco, who fingered former teammates as steroid users in a book referenced in Mitchell's report, expressed disappointment in its contents. He called the report "a slap on the hand" and said some names of drug users were missing. He told Fox Business Channel that New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez should have been included.

"I could not believe that his name was not in the report," Canseco said. Scott Boras, Rodriguez's agent, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Besides Clemens, Pettitte and Vaughn, other stars listed by Mitchell included former Dodger Kevin Brown, David Justice and Barry Bonds. Another former Most Valuable Player on the list, Miguel Tejada, was recently traded from the Baltimore Orioles to the Houston Astros.

"Other investigations will no doubt turn up more names," Mitchell said.

Selig said he commissioned this investigation against the wishes of his closest advisors. The probe is believed to have cost owners more than $20 million, but neither Mitchell nor Selig would provide a figure.

"If there were problems, I wanted them revealed," Selig said. "If there were individuals who engaged in wrongdoing, I wanted those facts to come to light. If there were recommendations that would improve our drug testing program, I wanted to improve them. His report is a call to action. And I will act."

Mitchell issued a series of recommendations, among them to let a third party independent of owners and players run the sport's drug testing, to increase random year-round tests, to establish an investigative unit to pursue allegations of drug use beyond testing and to record every package received by a player in a clubhouse.

Selig said he would implement all recommendations that do not require union consent and ask the players' association to discuss the rest "in the immediate future." Donald Fehr, executive director of the association, said the union would consider Mitchell's recommendations. Selig also said he would convene an "HGH summit" shortly.

Mitchell's report indicated human growth hormone has replaced steroids as the performance-enhancing substance of choice because baseball does not test for human growth hormone.

The owners have funded research for a urine test -- and Fehr said the players would agree to such a test if one can be developed -- but said current blood tests for human growth hormone are of "dubious or little practical value."

In his report, Mitchell cited a "widespread misconception" that baseball did not ban steroids and other performance-enhancing substances until 2002. Baseball expressly prohibited the illegal use of steroids as far back as 1991, according to the report, but did not test for them until 2003.

Although the union had consistently opposed testing without reasonable cause, thus "delaying the adoption of mandatory random drug testing in major league baseball for nearly 20 years," Mitchell also chided owners for not pushing for testing sooner "because they were much more concerned about the serious economic issues facing major league baseball."

Said Mitchell: "With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that baseball missed the early warning signs of a growing crisis."

In general, Mitchell said, his corroboratory evidence included other interviews, phone records, shipping documents, canceled checks and money orders.

"Many players are named, their reputations adversely affected forever," Fehr said, "even if it turns out down the road they should not have been."

Fehr said he welcomed Mitchell's suggestion that active players not be suspended but said the union would fight on behalf of any player who might be disciplined. Mitchell said Selig should grant amnesty to those players and look to the future.

Said Mitchell: "Spending more months, or even years, in contentious disciplinary proceedings will keep everyone mired in the past."

Yet Selig insisted he would consider suspensions "on a case-by-case basis" and act "swiftly" in doing so. "I think, frankly, that is a byproduct of this investigation that I need to address."

The Kansas City Royals signed outfielder Jose Guillen for $36 million last week, well aware he would be suspended for reportedly ordering steroids and human growth hormone. On the day Guillen signed, Selig suspended him for 15 days.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

Times staff writers Dylan Hernandez and Lance Pugmire contributed to this report.

Hammer falls on Bonds

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/tom_verducci/11/15/bonds.indictment/

Hammer falls on Bonds
Major League Baseball knew this day was coming
Posted: Friday November 16, 2007
Barry Bonds is set to appear in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Dec. 7.
Heinz Kluetmeier/SI

The number 762, which today looks very much like the final number, is an asterisk unto itself.

Barry Bonds hit what may very well be the final home run of his career on Sept. 5 against Ubaldo Jimenez, a young man who was born just two years before Bonds hit his first home run. Seven-hundred-sixty-two has the authenticy of a curbside Rolex, the honor of Ben Johnson's 9.79. There is nothing commissioner Bud Selig needs to do. Doubt and disgrace are lined up to be its perpetual companions.

The number 732 is what counts. Officially, the case number is 3:07-CR-00732-WHA, the United States of America vs. Barry Lamar Bonds. You tell me the team that would dare sign a 43-year-old designated hitter who is under indictment by the federal government, which officially has called him out as a liar and a cheat of criminal proportions. Given Bonds' instinct to resist, and given the delusional world in which he has created for himself, you would expect he is prepared for a lengthy and costly legal fight, a fight that would seem to subsume whatever playing days he might have had left. It could be years before he goes all Marion Jones on us, like Pete Rose gone clean, if the day ever does come at all.

Think about it: the all-time home run leader is forced into exile by a federal felony indictment. Doesn't exactly have the ring of a Mastercard commercial with tinkling piano music, now does it? And you can bet nobody in the Major League Baseball offices is too broken up over it. They will root hard for Alex Rodriguez to get to 763 quickly.

On days like this I go back to what Gary Sheffield once told me he told Bonds the one winter they shared a house, workouts and, apparently, some wonder cream. "Barry," Sheffield said he told Bonds one particular day when he was fed up with Bonds' attitude, "you treat people like [garbage] enough, it's going to come back to haunt you. People will look for reasons to get you."

Understand this: the BALCO investigation began as a dumpster-diving crackdown into steroid distribution. Bonds was not a target, only a client. And if he wasn't its most famous client, he was its most arrogant and defiant. He did everything but wag a Palmeiro finger in the face of the feds, daring them to come after him. This went on for four years. So here are the feds, loaded with these doping calendars and, as we read in the indictment 732 now, at least one positive drug test, and they've already built cases against Jones and the track coach Trevor Graham, and they're supposed to let the biggest, most defiant fish off the hook? Not happening. It's human nature. It may explain the curious timing of the HGH leaks out of Florida: Rick Ankiel just when he is baseball's Cinderella, Scott Schoenweis while he is in a wild pennant race, Paul Byrd when he is in the ALCS, Jose Guillen when a decision on his option year is in play ...

It turns out that Bonds was going to get indicted all along. Greg Anderson, his trainer, never did flip, at least according to his attorney. The supporting information in the indictment is almost entirely from information the United States attorney's office has held for years. Here are the details of the four perjury charges:

• Count 1: That Bonds gave false testimony when he said Anderson did not provide him with steroids in 2000 and 2001.

• Count 2: That Bonds was not truthful when asked if Anderson or anyone else had ever injected him with drugs.

• Count 3: That Bonds was not truthful when he said Anderson never gave him growth hormone.

• Count 4: That Bonds was not truthful when he said he did not receive the cream and the clear (or what Bonds thought to be flaxseed oil) until prior to the 2003 season.

To make these charges, the feds must have strong evidence that specifically rebuts Bonds' statements. For instance, federal agents, according to grand jury proceedings, possess doping calendars that indicate that Bonds tested positive for two anabolic steroids in November of 2000. (BALCO would routinely send out clients' blood to be tested.) So what took so long if Anderson didn't provide the tipping point? Maybe it wasn't too long. This is a federal felony indictment we're talking about. The same people who are crying "what took so long" are the same ones who would have been crying "rush to judgment" if the indictment came down in 2004. The feds don't bring an indictment unless they are rock-solid sure they have a winnable case. There is no reason to rush. Besides, the presiding U.S. attorney and the attorney general both were replaced during the investigation.

But you do have to wonder how much of this was done with MLB people inside the loop. Was it coincidence that Bonds gets indicted five days after former Sen. George Mitchell closed the door on receiving evidence and conducting interviews for his steroid investigation?

You can listen all you want to people claiming this to be a "sad day for baseball," but it's a day baseball knew was coming. On the morning of Bonds' indictment, Selig announced that baseball topped $6 billion in revenues for the first time, allowing it to claim it has topped the NFL as the biggest cash cow in North American sports. Taking Bonds out of the equation, the way the suits at MLB see it, is not a bad thing for business.

So maybe this is how it ends for Bonds, like so many mobsters and white-collar criminals, with the coverup instead of the crime bringing about the downfall. Of course, this is an indictment, not a conviction. He will get a chance to clear his name, to fight the charges, and we should let the process play out. But to be playing major league baseball next spring, Bonds needs the government to have a weak case after four years of preparation, to be flat wrong about these doping calendars and drug tests. He needs his name cleared quickly at trial and with certainty. And after that he still needs a team to believe that he is worth the baggage, right or wrong, of being the face of The Steroid Era, an era baseball so clumsily is trying to bury, like nuclear waste rods in the desert. The odds of all that falling into place for Bonds are enormous, much greater than one in 732.

Losing his crown, but not his class

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-shaikin8aug08,1,3472298.story?coll=la-headlines-sports&track=crosspromo

Losing his crown, but not his class
Baseball did not deserve his grace, but Hank Aaron helped save the game he loves.
Bill Shaikin

August 8, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- For Hank Aaron, that's 755 home runs, and one save. Bless him. Baseball did not deserve his grace. On this night, Aaron saved the game he loved. Never has an athlete served as a better role model than Aaron did Tuesday, 32 years into retirement. He acted selflessly, with dignity and nobility, demonstrating to the commissioner and to all the world one can put aside personal feelings for the greater good.

It might not rub off on Bud Selig, but it rubbed off on Barry Bonds.

There is a time and place for everything, including debates about the legitimacy of Bonds' ownership of the all-time home run record. On the night he set the record, in front of his home crowd, in a moment destined for replays in his mind and on his DVD, Bonds did not deserve to be demeaned.

Selig did not get that, and thank God he was not here. Selig considers Bonds a cheat, a fraud and a suspected criminal. Aaron isn't a fan either.

But, when Bonds tied Aaron's record Saturday, Selig issued a statement that started with the word "congratulations" and included the words "controversy" and "innocent until proven guilty."

As Bonds neared the record, Selig waffled on whether he would attend, making sure everyone knew how torn he was. When he did show up, he did so grudgingly, stuffing his hands in pockets Saturday while the San Diego crowd -- the visiting crowd! -- put its collective hands together to acknowledge history and the moment. This was not an endorsement of Bonds, just respect for the game.

Aaron never waffled. He said he would not attend, and he did not. He did not comment about Bonds' character. He let his actions speak for themselves.

But, with history calling, Aaron decided he needed to say the right words, to do the right thing.

When the Giants contacted Aaron, to ask him to record a congratulatory message, he could have said no, to remain true to his convictions. Or he could have agreed, then mixed innuendo with congratulations, a la Selig.

Bonds dropped his bat, pumped both arms toward the sky, clapped his hands, circled the bases and disappeared into the arms of his son, surrounded by teammates and family. The Giants celebrated, with fireworks and banners, with streamers and classical music.

Dmitri Young, the first baseman for the Washington Nationals, waved some of his teammates off the field so Bonds could enjoy the moment alone. The rest of the Nationals stayed on the field, sharing the moment and gathering near third base to applaud Bonds. Either way, the right thing.

Willie Mays, Bonds' godfather, the first Giants' icon in San Francisco, emerged from the dugout. The two men stood arm in arm, 1,416 home runs between them, first and fourth on the all-time list.

And then Bonds turned, Mays turned, we all turned to the enormous video board behind center field. There was Aaron, suddenly second on the all-time list, larger than life and appropriately so.

"I would like to offer my congratulations to Barry Bonds on becoming baseball's career home run leader," Aaron said. "It is a great accomplishment which requires longevity and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball, and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years.

"I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams."

In the afternoon, several hours before the milestone, Mays sat in an office in the Giants clubhouse, talking about the promise he made to Bonds' late father, Bobby.

"The father told me to make sure I looked out for him," Mays said. "That's what I'm trying to do, to make sure he does the right thing. The last three weeks or so, I think he's done a magnificent job in interviews. He's trying to do the right thing."

And so, after Aaron spoke on the video board, Bonds turned to the crowd and spoke. He did not, as Rickey Henderson did when he set the stolen base record, declare himself the greatest of all time. He thanked the fans, his teammates, his family and the Nationals, then broke down in tears as he thanked his father.

Humility, not hubris. The right thing.

And then, incredibly, Selig issued another clumsy statement.

"While the issues which have swirled around this record will continue to work themselves toward resolution," Selig said, "today is a day for congratulations on a truly remarkable achievement."

Those issues will have their day. Bonds Watch is over, but Steroids Watch is not. Bonds still faces the possibility of indictment, for perjury or tax evasion. The Mitchell Commission will issue its report on how steroids infected baseball -- far beyond Bonds, if the report has any credibility. In courts in Arizona and New York, affidavits could be unsealed, within them the names of dozens of baseball players allegedly involved with steroids.

This was not the day for those issues, as Aaron understood and Selig did not. This was the day for remembering what my mother told me, and your mother told you: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

Bonds makes history with 756th home run

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_sp_ba_ga_su/bbn_bonds756

Bonds makes history with 756th home run
By JANIE McCAULEY, AP Sports Writer
8-8-7

For one spectacular moment, Barry Bonds and everybody cheering him could forget about the controversy surrounding his chase and appreciate the phenomenal feat: 756.

Nobody in the majors — not Hank Aaron, not Babe Ruth — has ever hit more home runs than the San Francisco star.

On Tuesday night, in his home ballpark, it didn't matter how many of them might have been fueled by steroids or performance-enhancers. Bonds has the title of home run king all to himself, ending Aaron's 33-year reign.

"This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period," Bonds said.

And more than 43,000 adoring Giants fans, including his godfather, Hall of Famer Willie Mays, surely agreed.

Bonds raised both arms over his head like a prize fighter in victory, fists clenched — and then he took off. It was over at long last.

Bonds did it with a shot to the deepest part of the ballpark with one out in the fifth inning against Washington's Mike Bacsik.

Bonds sent the 84-mph fastball arcing high into the night, 435 feet into the right-center field seats. And then, the celebration began in force — fireworks, streamers, banners commemorating the accomplishment, and even a party in McCovey Cove.

Conspicuous by their absence were the commissioner and Hammerin' Hank himself.

Though he was on hand for the tying homer three days ago, deciding to put baseball history ahead of the suspicions plaguing the Giants slugger, Bud Selig wasn't there for the record-breaker.

Instead, he sent two emissaries, Major League Baseball executive vice president Jimmie Lee Solomon and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. Selig also issued a statement.

"While the issues which have swirled around this record will continue to work themselves toward resolution, today is a day for congratulations on a truly remarkable achievement," Selig said.

Bonds also heard personally from the commissioner with congratulations.

"I was very happy about that," Bonds said.

As for Aaron, he said all along he had no interest in being there whenever and wherever his record was broken. He was true to his word, but he did offer a taped message of congratulations that played on the stadium's video board during a 10-minute, in-game tribute.

"It is a great accomplishment which required skill, longevity and determination," he said.

"Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historic achievement.

"My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams."

A woman who answered the phone at Aaron's home in Georgia shortly after Bonds' homer said that Aaron was asleep.

"When I saw Hank Aaron that made everything," Bonds said. "We've always loved him. He's always the home run king."

With a long, satisfied stare, Bonds watched as the ball sailed over the fence and disappeared into the scrum in the first few rows. Then he raised both arms over his head like a victorious prize fighter, fists clenched, and took off.

"I knew I hit it," Bonds said. "I knew I got it. I was like, phew, finally."

His 17-year-old batboy son, Nikolai, was already bouncing on home plate as Dad rounded third and ran the final 90 feet to make it official. After a long embrace, the rest of the family joined in — his mother, two daughters and wife. And then there was Mays, who removed his cap and congratulated his godson.

Bonds saved his most poignant words for last, addressing his late father, Bobby.

"My dad," he said, looking to the sky and choking back tears. "Thank you."

Bonds had wanted to break the record at home, where he would be assured of a friendly crowd. They were all right, unlike in San Diego where some fans held up signs with asterisks.

Bonds has always denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

After doubling and singling his first two times up, Bonds hit a solo home run. Bacsik put his left hand to the back of his head as soon as Bonds connected.

"I dreamed about it as a kid, but when I dreamed about it, I was the one hitting the home run and not giving it up," Bacsik said.

"I didn't really want to be part of history as a bad part, but I am," he said. "I'm OK with it."

Bacsik later spoke with Bonds and got an autographed a bat from the Giants star.

Bonds took his position in left field to start the sixth, then was replaced and drew another standing ovation. The Nationals won the game, 8-6.

A fan wearing a Mets jersey wound up with the historic ball. Matt Murphy of New York emerged from the stands with the souvenir and a bloodied face, and was whisked to a secure room.

Even with Bonds at the top of the chart, fans will surely keep debating which slugger they consider the true home run champion. Some will continue to cling to Aaron while other, older rooters will always say it's Babe Ruth.

"It's all about history. Pretty soon, someone will come along and pass him," Mays said before the game.

Aaron held the top spot for 12,173 days after connecting for No. 715 to pass the Babe on April 8, 1974.

"This is the greatest record in all of sports," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "We are all fortunate to witness it. It's awesome. This road to history has been a lot of fun."

Bonds homered exactly three years after Greg Maddux earned his 300th victory at the same ballpark. It's been quite a week of baseball milestones — over the weekend, Alex Rodriguez hit his 500th home run and Tom Glavine won No. 300.

A seven-time NL MVP, the 43-year-old Bonds hit his 22nd home run of the year. Bonds broke Mark McGwire's single-season record by hitting 73 in 2001 and while he's no longer such a force, opposing pitchers remain wary.

Bonds and Giants management bickered in the offseason over contract issues. This big night was the main reason owner Peter Magowan brought back the star left fielder for a 15th season in San Francisco, signing him to a $15.8 million, one-year contract.

Bonds' once-rapid quest for the record had slowed in recent years as his age and balky knees diminished his pace. He hit 258 home runs from 2000-04, but has only 53 since then.

While steroids have tinged Bonds' pursuit, it was race that was the predominant issue when Aaron broke Ruth's mark in 1974. Aaron dealt with hate mail and death threats from racist fans who thought a black man was not worthy of breaking the record set by a white hero, the beloved Babe.

Bonds was destined for stardom at an early age. The son of All-Star outfielder Bobby Bonds and the godson of one of the game's greatest players, Bonds spent his childhood years roaming the clubhouse at Candlestick Park, getting tips from Mays and other Giants.

"I visualized him playing sports at a high level. He was 5 when he was in my locker all the time," Mays said.

In a matter of years, Bonds went from a wiry leadoff hitter with Pittsburgh in 1986 to a bulked-up slugger. That transformation is at the heart of his many doubters, who believe Bonds cheated to accomplish his feats and should not be considered the record-holder.

There are plenty of fans already hoping for the day that Bonds' total — whatever it ends up — is topped. Rodriguez may have the best chance, with his 500 home runs at age 32 far ahead of Bonds' pace.

Bonds said he hadn't yet thought beyond 756. He plans to play in 2008.

"I'll tell you one thing: I'm going to hit a lot better from now on," he said after a champagne celebration in the clubhouse.

Costas Zings Bonds Over 'Midget' Comment

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QKTPG00&show_article=1

Costas Zings Bonds Over 'Midget' Comment

Jul 27, 2007
By RONALD BLUM
AP Baseball Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - A day after Barry Bonds called him a "little midget man who knows (nothing) about baseball," broadcaster Bob Costas said he wasn't upset with the San Francisco Giants slugger and responded with a jab of his own.

"As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally," Costas said Thursday in a telephone interview.

On this week's edition of HBO's "Costas Now," commissioner Bud Selig, Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and chemist Patrick Arnold discussed Bonds, his pursuit of Hank Aaron's home run record and suspicions that Bonds has used steroids. Schilling and Arnold said they believed Bonds had taken performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds viewed at least part of the show before Wednesday's game against Atlanta.

"I've actually always had a pretty cordial relationship with Barry," Costas said. "I have no ill feelings toward him personally. I regard him as one of the greatest players of all time who got an inauthentic boost and then became a superhuman player. I wish him no ill whatsoever."

Costas said he understood why Bonds might have denigrated him.

"He's under tremendous scrutiny and some pressure. It's no big deal," Costas said. "This is a consequence of doing your job, and I've never tried to do my job in any case with the intention of calling attention to myself. I think if people watch the program, they can judge for themselves."

Told before Thursday's series finale that Costas claimed he came by his physique naturally, Bonds responded, "How do you know?" before going on to say he didn't care.
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AP Sports Writer Janie McCauley in San Francisco contributed to this report.