Box. Cubs fall to 5-3, Reds are now 6-3.
POTG: LF Matt Murton (2 H, 2 RBI, 1 RBI, HR, thank god him hitting 4th worked or Dusty would’ve lost faith forever)
Runner ups: uh, no one really. I’ll stretch and include P Scott Williamson (1 IP, 1K, 0BB+H)
not so good: Z, Neifi, Ohman, Howry, Hairston
Lead story on all sportcasts tonight.
Multiple sources told CNN that a federal grand jury has been hearing evidence for more than a month about whether Bonds perjured himself during his Dec. 4, 2003, testimony.
By sheer coincidence, and before I saw this story, I read the last half of Game of Shadows tonight.
I think they may have something with the perjury!
I thought the book was good; it wasn’t as dry as I feared it would be, though they do walk you through every individual piece of evidence. It’s not that you’re left with no doubt that Bonds (among many, many others – it’s a story of BALCO and not just him) was knowingly and willingly on illegal performance enhances, it’s that there’s no doubt the Giants knew, didn’t get involved, and wouldn’t get involved if they knew he was on something else right now.
It’s a small bit, but Jason Giambi actually came off looking good for his complete honesty at grand jury, when others were being pointlessly evasive. It’s too bad he didn’t keep that plan.
The story of Sheffield and Bonds falling out was quite good, if only because I remembered reading the Men’s Journal (though I couldn’t remember it was from there) story when the BALCO stuff first became public, and thought the dissection of Bonds’s training routines would seem quite different after the news broke. And it sure did.
That anyone involved in baseball would let Greg Anderson (or anyone who’s been accused and/or charged for dealing steroids) is astounding.
Victor Conte will write his book, and it’ll follow the same pattern as Pete Rose one, but the first week sales won’t be near as strong.
Questions which never got a response but I wish they did:
– why didn’t they think to tape Conte’s confession on the day they stormed BALCO?
– maybe this is outside the scope of a book (and a whole another book in itself), but a dominant theme of the first half of the book is athletes deciding “everyone’s using something, so we have to use something to keep up” – are they right? Is BALCO an exception or the rule?
– this all probably wouldn’t have surfaced if Conte wasn’t a braggart, and if a rival didn’t giftwrap and send a sample of THG to drug inspectors, because it was a previously un-existing steroid – does this mean we’re completely dependent on people turning on each other to uncover any drug use?
– if it takes a blood test to test for HGH, why don’t they just do the blood test?