INDEPTH: BARRY BONDS FACES STEROID SUSPICIONSWhat people are saying
CBC Sports Online | Last updated March 31, 2006
Giants slugger Barry Bonds is day-to-day with a strained left elbow. (CP file photo)
"No. I don't have to [use steroids]. I mean, I'm a good enough
ballplayer as it is. I don't need to be any better. I can't get any
better at this age." -- Barry Bonds in an interview with Bob
Costas, June 2002
"All you guys (journalists) lied! All of y'all and the story have lied. Should you have asterisks behind your name? All of you lied. All of you have said something wrong. All of you have dirt. When your closet's clean, then come clean somebody else's ...
What did I do? What did I do? What are you going to apologize for when you're wrong? This is old stuff. I mean, it's like watching Sanford and Son. It's just rerun after rerun after rerun. It's almost comical, basically. We've got alcohol that's the No. 1 killer in America, and we legalize that. You've got tobacco, No. 2 or 3 killer in America. We legalize that. There's other issues. It's become Hard Copy all day long. Are you guys jealous? Are you upset? Disappointed? What? ...
I don't know if steroids are going to help you in baseball. I just don't believe it. I don't believe steroids can help eye-hand coordination [and] technically hit a baseball."
-- Barry Bonds lashes out at reporters after his grand jury
testimony was leaked, February 2005
"The fact that someone should write in the newspaper is I've never failed a drug test."
-- Barry Bonds, September 2005
"As the 1998 season ended, Bonds's elite status had slipped a notch. The game and its fans were less interested in the complete player who could hit for average and power and who had great speed and an excellent glove. The emphasis was shifting to pure slugging. As McGwire was celebrated as the best slugger of the modern era and perhaps the greatest who had ever lived, Bonds became more jealous than people who knew him well had ever seen."
-- Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Game of Shadows
"It's my opinion that the two writers of the book have a disease called fabrication-itis."
-- Victor Conte, BALCO founder, on Game of Shadows
"Nope. I won't even look at it. For what? I won't even look at it. There's no need to."
-- Barry Bonds, when asked whether he will read Game of
Shadows, March 2006
"Nothing is more important to me than the integrity of the game of baseball."
-- Commissioner Bud Selig in launching an investigation into
alleged steroid use by major leaguers before drug testing began, March
2006
"Rather than stand up and take responsibility for how he and others within the institution of baseball failed to lead on the steroid issue, Bud Selig is going to order an investigation of the steroid use of Barry Bonds and others. Summon the hounds. Sound the horn. Let the hunt for scapegoats begin. Call your publicist, your favorite newspaper columnist, and bring 'em along."
-- Buster Olney, ESPN The Magazine
"It takes massive amounts of ego and self-righteousness to perpetrate a scam of the magnitude that Barry Bonds has perpetrated on the American public. Maybe steroids boost megalomania levels too. To look into the country's eyes and have the nerve to say you're as clean as Pat Boone's rap sheet takes the kind of practiced delusion that used to be the private realm of disgraced corporate leaders. Bonds is no bush-league con artist. He's a pro."
-- Rick Morrissey, Chicago Tribune
"We all figured he was juiced. We all knew he was a jerk. He has banked his money, he'll keep his hometown cheers and, very soon, he will have baseball's most sacred record, so what does he care? But, holy cow, does this ever wallop the national pastime. After years of denying its steroid problem to the heavens, baseball must now endure a summer of hell. Its two most revered figures are being stalked by a certified cheat, and there's nothing baseball can do about it."
-- Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times
"Bonds is finished. He might play again, but there is only a chalk outline left around his integrity and home run totals. And the only way he gets into Cooperstown is if he spends the $14.50 for a Hall of Fame admission ticket."
-- Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com
"Take a good look at this guy now. Then remember that Henry Aaron was six feet tall and 180 pounds when he was hitting 755 home runs for the Braves and the Brewers. If Bonds doesn't have the good grace to walk away from baseball after this season, if he somehow does stick around long enough to get to 756, someday Aaron will have to stand on a field next to him and congratulate him. It will be as much a shame as any of this."
-- Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
"Surely, whatever legitimacy Bonds was clinging to is destroyed for good. Quite likely, his Hall of Fame hopes are destroyed as well. Never mind the common refrain from voters that 'he was a Hall of Fame player before he started using steroids.' This book documents such a massive program of cheating — beyond anything associated with Mark McGwire, who is known only to have used a substance, androstenedione, that was legally purchased over the counter in 1998 — that it is impossible to imagine casting a vote for him with a clear conscience."
-- Larry Stone, Seattle Times
"According to [Game of Shadows], at various times Barry Bonds
was taking two notorious designer steroids known as the Cream and
the Clear, as well as insulin, human growth hormone, testosterone
decanoate (a fast-acting steroid known as 'Mexican beans') and trenbolone,
a steroid created to improve the muscle quality of cattle. He also
took Winstrol, better known as stanozolol (Ben Johnson's 'go-to' drug),
Deca-Durabolin, Clomid (a women's infertility drug thought to help
a steroid user recover his natural testosterone production) and Modafinil
(a narcolepsy drug used as a stimulant). Whoa! Bonds was taking all
of Aisle 7 in the Rite-Aid!' -- Tony Kornheiser, Washington Post
"Bonds isn't quitting or admitting anything, Major League Baseball isn't going to discipline him or demand that he explain himself because they're pot-committed to celebrating homer No. 715. The Giants aren't going to inconvenience him in any way because he's still bank to them. The folks from the ESPN docu-thing of Bonds' year adroitly will skip over this current unpleasantness, because they've got a show to do, and months of shooting still ahead of them. Thus, there will be no final accounting, no resolution. Just more roping about doping."
-- Ray Ratto, San Francisco Chronicle
"I don't get, I really don't, this idea that baseball commissioner Bud Selig and his pinstripe-suited owner buddies have to take the fall for the Steroid Era.
Yes, they might have been fast asleep when all those biceps began to balloon and all those baseballs started to scream out of parks. In fact, maybe Bud and his buddies were actually playing possum back then. You know, the whole "blind eye" argument. It's possible…
But come on, everybody. Let's place the real blame where the real blame belongs (the players). By fingering Bud Selig and his buds for the Steroid Era, you're blaming the warden for the breakout. You're blaming the teacher for the spitball fight. You're blaming the napping guard for the diamond heist."
-- John Donovan, SI.com
"Bonds had plenty of enablers. Blame commissioner Bud Selig, owners who saw increased offensive numbers as dollar signs at the gate and TV contracts.
Blame the players' association and management for not coming up with a stiffer drug plan until 2005.
But can you ignore the 374 home runs Bonds hit before 1998 when his steroid use is alleged to have begun? Or, the seven Gold Gloves he won before '98 and the three National League MVP awards?
We don't think so.
We thought he was a Hall of Famer when he left the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1992. And so, he still is today."
-- Bob Elliott, Toronto Sun
"Had I known, definitely I would've said something, but I didn't know.
Everybody was speculating about a lot of people. Everybody saw the
physical change. You didn't know if Barry was lifting weights, because
he lifts all the time. [The book] says I wasn't interested, but what
are you going to do? I'm not a detective. What are you going to do
as a manager? How can anybody assert I wasn’t interested?" -- Chicago Cubs manger Dusty Baker, Bonds's former manager
with the Giants
"I don't know what [Bonds] did the last two years. All I know is the guy can hit."
-- Pete Rose
"So now a book written by reporters who have hounded Bonds for years is evidence of his wrong doing? If Bonds is ever found guilty of taking steroids by a court of law then you can question his Hall status. I don't trust sports reporters with an agenda anymore than a politician at election time."
-- Baseball fan Brad Moffitt, from Columbus, Ohio
