An Asterisk Looms Over Baseball
Game's Most Hallowed Mark Is Again Called Into Question

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 16, 2007; E01

As swiftly as an indictment was unsealed yesterday by a grand jury in San Francisco, the questions rose again, questions of history and perspective, of right and wrong. They are the same questions that have surrounded Barry Bonds since he began launching baseballs out of ballparks more frequently than anyone before him.

They are here now in full, with the possibility Bonds will be jailed, baseball's new home run king serving as a symbol of a sport whose reputation has been sullied by what many believe was widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs from a generation of players.

Long before yesterday's indictment, Bonds, 43, had become the face of what is widely known as "The Steroids Era." But the criminal charges brought a stark reality to the situation, particularly because some observers believed that, after a four-year investigation, federal prosecutors would never be able to indict the former San Francisco Giant.

Now, with former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell leading an investigation into baseball's abuses of steroids and other banned substances, there is a feeling that Bonds might merely be the most prominent in a string of names that will be publicly embarrassed in coming weeks.

"Baseball's much bigger than this case," former commissioner Fay Vincent said last night in a telephone interview. "The Mitchell investigation will tell us what's been going on over the last 10-15 years. I don't think any of it's going to be pretty."

The future for Bonds -- charged with perjury and obstruction of justice -- will now play out in court. There, a black-and-white answer -- guilty or innocent -- could eventually be delivered.

Baseball, though, romanticizes its history and records more than any other American sport. On Aug. 7, Bonds sent a fastball from Washington Nationals left-hander Mike Bacsik over the center field fence at AT&T Park in San Francisco for his 756th career home run. With that, he surpassed Hank Aaron. He has, indisputably, more home runs than anyone else.

But with the federal government accusing Bonds of lying to a grand jury when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs, there is the possibility it will be proven -- rather than merely suspected -- that Bonds received artificial help along the way. In that case, should the mark stand?

After Bonds set the record, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., displayed a collection of items from his run to history -- the helmets Bonds wore when he hit Nos. 755 and 756, a scorecard, Bacsik's cap. There was no mention of Bonds's legal troubles, or of the suspicions surrounding the mark.

Hall spokesman Brad Horn said last night there were no plans "at this time" to change the display. Bonds would be eligible to be elected to the Hall five years after retirement, though Mark McGwire -- with no criminal charges or proof he cheated -- was roundly rejected in this, his first year of eligibility. But even with an indictment, Bonds's record remains.

"You don't answer hypotheticals," Vincent said. "I think you have to wait."

There is, too, the question of how the record would be changed even with a guilty verdict or an admission from Bonds that he cheated.

"If you're going to take away home runs from Bonds, how many do you take away?" said baseball historian David Vincent, author of the book, "Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball's Ultimate Weapon."

"If you take one away, then you take it away from the pitcher," David Vincent said. "That changes the score of the game. It changes the standings. And oh, by the way, the Giants went to the World Series one of those years. . . . You can't undo the world. You can't make the world spin backwards like Superman ."

As home run totals skyrocketed in the 1990s -- and fans came to parks in record numbers -- the questions followed, culminating in a riveting session in front of a congressional committee in 2005, when sluggers such as McGwire and Sammy Sosa were asked about the impact of steroids on the game.

Bonds was not invited to testify. But the reality of baseball's problem was apparent. Yesterday's indictment was the most significant development since.

"We live in a culture where the biggest sin seems to be getting caught lying or cheating, and this would be a federal entity saying that Barry Bonds did both," said Richard Lapchick, a sports ethicist at the University of Central Florida. "We're talking about, arguably, the greatest player of his generation now being subject to this federal indictment. Though it's been expected by a lot of people, it says something about not only Barry Bonds, but about the failure of baseball for so long to monitor the situation that it became acceptable among players to take these kinds of steps."

It is becoming more and more obvious that, for some players, steroids were accepted. Since the end of the season, soft-tossing pitcher Paul Byrd of the Cleveland Indians has admitted to taking human growth hormone. Other players -- including former Nationals outfielder Jose Guillen -- have been identified by a San Francisco Chronicle investigation as receiving shipments of HGH and steroids.

The accusations surrounding Bonds and others have created a culture in baseball in which even the players whisper about each other.

"It kind of comes up on certain players," Bacsik said last night from his home in Texas. "'Do you think that it was all-natural? Do you think he maybe used something?' Does it come up on Barry Bonds? Yeah, people talk about it. But it comes up on other people, too.

"We're really going to single out Barry Bonds today. But it just seems like over the past couple years -- and especially this last month -- there's a lot of guys that have a lot of stuff that needs to be cleared up. I don't want to say, 'Oh, no, Barry Bonds has ruined baseball' if everything were true. It's one of those things where time will tell."

But what, exactly, will time tell?

"I think we are on the downside of this," Fay Vincent said. "I think the Mitchell report is going to be devastating and embarrassing, and this is the beginning of that. But baseball can take it. . . . Baseball would be more at risk by not doing what they're doing, not cleaning it up."