This looks like it’s trumping just about everything right now. I’m going to opine on this over the weekend, but in the meantime, John Perricone has a nice running series of articles on the whole issue of Steroids and Baseball. Either you can click on the link at the top, or you can click here.

***UPDATE***

First off, I’m not an expert on any of this. I have no idea what falls within the realm of performance enhancing drugs or not. Or what’s considered a steroid or not. For most of my 20s, I was a gym rat. Most weeks I was at the gym 4 to 5 times, and I also did a lot of running. I tried a few supplements, most of which didn’t do anything for me. One did. I took Creatine for about a month, and even though it’s probably not considered a banned substance, it was definitely performance enhancing. So I’m not sure what qualifes and what doesn’t, or if it’s as arbritrary as what’s considered an “assault weapon,” but I do know the stuff gave me an extra push.

So what about Barry Bonds, and to a lesser extent, Jason Giambi. I’m going to assume that the leaks are in fact truthful, which is why Giambi got the “lesser extent” tag. He admitted he was a knowing user. So that leaves us with Bonds, and three different scenarios.

Scenario 1 – Barry Bonds never took steroids

I think it’s safe to say this is an unrealistic scenario. Again we’re assuming the leaks are factual, and from the sound of it, Barry admitted he took something. Which leads us to…..

Scenario 2 – Barry Bonds took steroids but didn’t know it?

In this case, Barry was misled as he admitted in his testimony. For a lot of people, this probably doesn’t sound like a viable alterantive, but Anderson was supposed to be a good, long time, so-called friend of Bonds. Is it unrealistic that his friend might try to dupe Barry for a few bucks? There’s a lot of greedy people out there, so that’s a definite yes. I know if a friend of mine handed me a pill and told me it was high powered vitamin, I’d probably take it. Of course, I trust my friends implicity.

Scenario 3 – Barry Bonds took steroids and he knew it

Now we have intent. Obviously, this would be the worst possible outcome, making Barry essentially a cheater. But as I stated before, what qualifies, and what doesn’t? Does that even mean anything? If he took Andro three years ago, which is now banned, does that mean he cheated?

So what’s my completely uninformed opinion? Basically I’ll go with 2.5. Anderson lied to him, but Barry, in the back of his mind suspected what he was doing wasn’t right. His punishment will probably be….nothing, other then all of his records from here on out will be under scrutiny. Steroids might not be able to help you hit a ball better, but it would definitely allow someone to perform better at an older age like Barry’s been able to do.

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