Bonds wants to be victim

Unable to sue for libel, outrageous lawsuit designed to gather sympathy

Barry Bonds has been called a lot of things over the years. Feared slugger, future Hall of Famer, steroid abuser and pompous jerk are among those that most immediately come to mind.

Who would have ever imagined adding protector of America's justice system to the list?

Lawyers for Bonds, apparently. Because there they were in court Friday armed with legal claims so laughable you wonder why they didn't just drop them off at the back door and run really fast before someone found out who had done it.

Before the flurry of legal activity, you might have thought all Bonds had to worry about this spring was where to put his recliner in the locker room and how to remember the difference between the cream and the clear.

Turns out the slugger has more weighty issues on his mind. He's worried about the fragility of the grand jury system in California.

Sure he is. His lawyers say so, so it must be true.

"The true victim is not Barry Bonds, but the sanctity and integrity of the grand jury process," one of them wrote.

Funny, victim isn't a term that usually comes to mind when describing Bonds. Then again, crusader for justice isn't, either.

Before the book "Game of Shadows" came out the most experience Bonds had in a courtroom -- aside from his appearance before the BALCO grand jury -- was when he asked a judge to reduce his child support payments because the 1994 baseball strike had cut into his multimillion-dollar income.

Now he's gone to court to stop authors of the book from making money from it because he believes the grand jury system needs to be protected.

Maybe this is a new side of Bonds we haven't seen before. Maybe when the season begins he plans to tackle the issue of global warming, or work on a solution for Social Security on long road trips.

Or maybe he's just trying to divert attention from the fact the book painstakingly lays out just how Bonds juiced himself with such a smorgasbord of various substances that he's on the verge of owning every home run record in the game.

The most interesting thing about the suit isn't the legal claims it makes, because they are so silly that they will likely be tossed out before Bonds has a chance to park a ball in McCovey Cove this season.

What is most interesting is what isn't said.

There are no claims that the material in the book is false. And there is no contention that San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams libeled Bonds in a book based not only on grand jury testimony but a variety of other documents and interviews with some 200 people.

Hardly a peep at all, in fact, about the contents, other than the suggestion that they might be based on "unsupported fabrications by extortionists and demonstrated liars."

Seems like Bonds' lawyers didn't sleep through Obfuscation 101, where first-year law students learn that if you don't have a defense you simply attack and raise enough smoke to overshadow the real issue.

What the lawyers were looking for in court wasn't really a temporary restraining order. What they really wanted were sound clips that would paint Bonds as a victim, and headlines that might suggest to those who don't read any deeper that Bonds was suing over the truth of the book and not over some arcane legal theory.

Bonds' lawyers have known for a few months what is in the book. Plenty of time to put together a libel suit if the book was false. Plenty of time for Bonds to sit down before a microphone and deny the allegations himself.

"His bat speaks for himself and he's not going to speak on this action and this book," attorney Michael Rains said.

The problem is, Bonds' freakish physique also speaks for itself. At an age when players generally start fading, he bulked himself up into a caricature of himself.

According to the book, Bonds was so intent on regaining his position as baseball's top slugger from Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa that he ingested an assortment of substances that included a medication used to treat infertility in women and a steroid that improves the muscle quality of beef cattle.

He then professed amazement that the home runs were coming so frequently -- and going so far.

Even more amazing is how Bonds has so far escaped any punishment outside of the court of public opinion. He got a break when the principals of the BALCO scandal all pleaded guilty and avoided what would have been an embarrassing -- and revealing -- trial in court and, without the publication of the book, would have likely gotten through another season unscathed.

The truth is Bonds -- and the juiced sluggers before him -- are a disgrace to the game. Their home run records are meaningless and they have no business in the record books or the Hall of Fame.

The best lawyers in San Francisco can't find a way to spin that enough.