COMMENTARY
By Mike Celizic
NBCSports.com contributor
updated 1:30 p.m. ET July 11, 2006
 | Mike Celizic |
|
I can understand why Major League Baseball would want to know definitively whether Barry Bonds took performance enhancing drugs. I can not understand why the federal government is pouring its nearly limitless resources into that same effort.
This isn’t an investigation into the use of steroids and human growth hormone in baseball. This is a witch hunt. It’s not about cleaning up the game, it’s about putting Barry Bonds in jail.
We learned that when a reported 13 FBI agents spent six hours touring the home of Jason Grimsley. Until recently, Grimsley was a much traveled long reliever pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was relieved of his baseball duties the same day he became worthy of the kind of federal scrutiny normally reserved for serious criminals.
Grimsley’s ostensible crime was doing what hundreds of others were doing in baseball — extending his career with a little help from his pharmacist. But he’s the only player who’s had the pleasure of an unannounced visit to his domicile by the feds, who, you can be sure, inspected every nook and cranny of the premises. You can also be sure they didn’t put the furniture back or hang Grimsley’s clothes back up in the closet when they left.
The feds have every right to pursue lawbreakers, and there certainly are plenty of those to go after, most of whom have done far greater damage to the public weal than baseball players who took drugs to make their muscles bigger. Given the number of baseball players who have probably used performance enhancing drugs and the number who probably still are using human growth hormone, it’s telling that they chose to focus their investigative wrath on a fringe player like Grimsley.
Baseball's steroid scandal |
|
Grimsley won the booby prize in the public relations war on performance enhancing drugs by virtue of having been caught with the goods. The feds told him they’d go easy on him if he cooperated with them, so he either named names or confirmed names that investigators already had. Exactly how the names came out depends on which set of lawyers you listen to.
The FBI decided to come down on him like a ton of indictments when he refused to wear a wire in an effort to entrap other players, who could then be used to zero in on Bonds, the real target.
I never thought I’d feel sympathy for Bonds. But this holy war being waged by the feds has managed to do the trick. I still don’t like the man, but I also have a sense of justice. And justice says that if half the game — or more, if you listen to Jose Canseco, and it becomes clearer by the day that he’s a reliable source — was doing drugs, then you don’t go after one person and call it a day.
What about Mark McGwire? Or Sammy Sosa? Or Rafael Palmeiro? Or Jason Giambi? Or Jim Leyritz, who has admitted doing amphetamines and steroids? Or even the fringe players who have tested positive on both the major and minor league levels?
And if the object is to clean up the game, why are the feds telling witnesses, including Bonds’ alleged former girlfriend, not to talk to baseball investigators? Are we interested in the truth, or are we interested only in punishing the most illustrious player alleged to have done what everyone else was doing?
![]()
Barry Bonds Section Front |
| Add Barry Bonds headlines to your news reader: |
Top NBCSports.com stories |
