NOTHING ELSE SEEMS to be working so it’s high time I sold my soul to how well sex sells on the internet: let’s talk about Barry Bonds’ balls and how they will be used against him in a court of law.
Admittedly, I’m channelling the frazzled spirit of Charlie Sheen’s dignity when I opt for an intro as lurid as that, but if I’m to glean anything from the 53 minutes I spent watching his all-too public meltdown Part Deux (ou Trois ou Cinq) on ABC last night, then it’s that if all other avenues have been closed off, let it all hang out there and sit tight until the moment when you bob back to the surface of respectability.
Unfortunately for this ill-advised theory held dear by me and Topper Harley, not to mention ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Bonds, letting it all hang out could just as easily come back to bite you in the ass.
A former girlfriend of the controversial baseball star will, according to Reuters, be allowed to testify how alleged steroid use during his career in the 1990s and early 2000s impacted on his sexual performance and caused fits of rage.
Bonds is being done for perjury in a grand jury investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) and steroid use in sport – not for direct usage but rather for lying about said usage. It’s all very confusing. But of course if his foul balls are set to be put up as Exhibit A and B, my attention is immediately drawn.
(I used to have class, seriously, but this country has a way of changing you.)
Kimberly Bell will be the woman stepping up to the plate on behalf of the government and, on what will truly be a landmark day for Major League Baseball, she is expected to testify that Bonds’ testicles shrank and that his batting average in bed was a paltry .270 as a result.
There will also be the shocking revelation that the notoriously grumpy Bonds was prone to fits of rage. Nothing to do with the fact that his ego was matched only by the massive grudge he developed during his time growing up and watching the way the media treated his All-Star father Bobby (also a Giant in his heyday).
But it’s sure to be an awkward affair for the defendant who yesterday pleaded not guilty in San Francisco’s US District Court.
So much for the smokescreens being provided to the MLB by probable lockouts in the NFL and the NBA. With the beginning of the season less than two months away, the headlines could be dominated up until that point by the perilous state of affairs at the New York Mets and the possibility that one of the sport’s most controversial figures will have his genitalia discussed in a court of law.
BALCO has a lot to answer for.
John Riordan writes a column for the Irish Examiner. He works as a freelance journalist in New York; check out his blog here.
Read his weekly pieces for TheScore here.
