The side effects of performance-enhancing substances haven’t disappeared in baseball — the pimples, the heart damage, the depression.
You will find evidence of it in two courtrooms this year.
One case started Monday in San Francisco, where Barry Bonds — holder of the most cherished and tainted record in baseball, the career home run mark — is standing trial on perjury charges.
The other will take place right here in Washington, where Roger Clemens, one of the all-time winningest pitchers, is scheduled to stand trial July 6 on perjury and obstruction of Congress charges.
Please note that neither star is being tried for using steroids and no one is going to go to jail for using steroids.
The charges are lying — Bonds in a 2003 grand jury investigation into BALCO laboratories and the production and distribution of illegal performance-enhancing substances and Clemens to Congress in a 2008 hearing on baseball’s Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing substances.
And please note that Bonds already has admitted to using steroids — the “cream” and the “clear,” as they have been described. He has claimed, though, that he didn’t knowingly take any illegal substances.
These two trials will be remarkable events. In San Francisco, you will have Bonds’ life put on trial, and the picture the prosecutors will paint won’t be pretty. There will be people who were close to Bonds — his former assistant, Steve Hoskins, and his former mistress, Kimberly Bell — testifying about not only Bonds’ steroid use but behavior that prosecutors will say was a result of steroid use.
There also will be former major league players, such as Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield and some of Bonds’ former teammates, called to testify about what they knew or saw.
But the San Francisco show will pale in comparison to what will happen in federal court here in the District this summer, where Clemens will stand trial on charges of lying to Congress. There likely will be a parade of New York Yankees stars and icons — Andy Pettitte (who gave a sworn statement to Congress saying Clemens admitted using human growth hormone), Derek Jeter and others who played with Clemens.
You likely will see former Yankees manager Joe Torre, who now works for baseball commissioner Bud Selig, coming to Washington to testify.
All of these stars will find themselves in the difficult position of being forced to tell the truth about what happened in a baseball clubhouse. They are raised in the game to keep life in the clubhouse to themselves and, for the most part, maintain that code.
That will be trumped, of course, by having to testify under oath. After all, that is the very reason these trials are taking place — lying under oath. If one lesson should have been learned out of the steroid era, it should be that outside of the clubhouse you can’t just lie your way out of the truth because of who you are.
Bonds and Clemens were so absorbed with who they were that they figured they made the rules like they had for most of their lives. Neither may wind up convicted, but what is revealed in that San Francisco courtroom and here in Washington will show the world who Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are. And it won’t be pretty.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
