Major League Baseball's secret spying

Major League Baseball sources told the New York Daily News that baseball launched a secret investigation of Barry Bonds a year before Commissioner Bud Selig appointed former senator George Mitchell to lead an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Of course, you already suspected as much if you read the earlier post, "Jose Canseco's interesting threat," where we pointed out that "the former Senate Majority Leader is not the guy you call if you want to know what happened. He's the guy you call if you know what happened and you don't want anybody else to find out."

Sure enough, the Daily News reports today that Major League Baseball officials "found plenty of damning information about Bonds" in their secret investigation and fully expect that he will be indicted next week on charges of perjury and tax evasion.

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh, the All-Star Game is going on without the presence of the only active player to hit more career home runs than Babe Ruth. Barry Bonds wasn't invited, and nobody at the game wants to talk about it.

If they think it's awkward now, wait until they try to stop Barry Bonds from going after Henry Aaron's record.

Judging from his past comments, we can expect Barry Bonds to issue a flat denial and vow to be fully exonerated in a court of law. We can expect sophisticated and expensive lawyering to stall the trial for quite a long time. We can expect Barry Bonds to continue playing as long as he's healthy enough to make it into the batter's box without a walker.

What will Major League Baseball do then? Suspend him without waiting for the jury's verdict? That won't look good. Pressure the team owners to refuse to sign him? That won't work as long as he sells tickets, and he does sell tickets.

We'll have to wait and see if the court of public opinion even cares about charges of perjury and tax evasion. Baseball fans may not be willing to cast the first stone at Barry Bonds over a little fibbing about drugs and some unreported cash income.

There's only one thing Major League Baseball can do if it wants to save the integrity of the career home run record. Sadly for baseball, Tonya Harding and her boyfriend don't do that kind of work anymore.


Copyright 2006

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