The perjury trial for Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run king, began today in a San Francisco courtroom. A few years ago, when an over-sized Bonds was hitting an unheard of number of baseballs over major-league fences, baseball fans everywhere might have been on the edge of their seats, waiting to see how this turns out.
↵Today, though, as we are about to embark on the fourth season since Bonds retired from the game or, depending on your point of view, was refused a job by all big-league teams, do we care? Should we care?
↵Personally, I don't really care. No matter what happens during this trial baseball fans know the deal. Bonds used steroids to gain an advantage. He and his cronies covered it up. Bonds lied about it. If he gets off it doesn't mean he isn't guilty -- it just means he's got damn good lawyers.
↵Besides which, here is another question. Is all of this worth it? USA Today points out that, even if he is found guilty Bonds is extremely unlikely to spend any time in jail. USA Today estimates that the government is spending between $10 and $50 million to prosecute Bonds and asks "can someone explain why a crime that doesn't merit weeks or months behind bars is worth spending millions to investigate?"
↵That's a good point. Only I don't have enough interest to bother looking into it.
↵You know, now that I think about it, maybe that lack of interest is the greatest punishment inflicted upon Bonds. Outside of San Francisco it seems like nobody cares about him, or his tainted accomplishments, any longer.
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