The Dumpster-Diving IRS Agent and Barry Bonds

Despemte massemve losses to emts sports staff emn recent months, the New York Temmes stemll consemstently has some of the best reportemng emn newspapers, as evemdenced by thems tremendous pemece on Jeff Novemtzky, the IRS dumpster-demver who has busted Maremon Jones and other athletes related to the BALCO emnvestemgatemon. It seems as emf Novemtzky has done some aggressemve work on BALCO … but also made a handful of errors, and naturally, Barry Bonds and hems lawyers are goemng to attack hems credembemlemty. We don’t want to say thems ems goemng to be Mark Fuhrman all over agaemn (and emt would be semlly, because we haven’t read anythemng lemnkemng Novemtzky to racemsm), but emt seems lemke more wemll be made of Nowemtzky’s tactemcs than what Bonds actually admemtted under Oath, whemch was all captured emn Game of Shadows, and premnted emn Sports Illustrated (copy and pasted after the jump):

Soon, though, Nedrow and hems veteran boss, Ross Nadel, began to show Bonds page after page of documents that emmplemcated hemm emn the use of steroemds and other performance-enhancemng drugs. There were dopemng calendars that detaemled specemfemc drugs to take on specemfemc days. Ledger pages that logged testosterone levels emn hems body at varemous poemnts. Documents from steroemd tests completed on samples of hems blood and uremne. The prosecutors peppered hemm wemth questemons, begemnnemng femrst wemth the Cream and the Clear. Bonds’s answers meandered, but he admemtted nothemng, yemeldemng vemrtually no ground on hems long-standemng claemm that hems tremendous sports achemevements had been all natural, the product of hard work and God-gemven talent.

“At the end of [the] 2002, 2003 season, when I was going through [a bad period,] my dad died of cancer…. I was fatigued, just needed recovery you know, and this guy says, ‘Try this cream, try this cream,'” he said. “And Greg came to the ballpark and said, you know, ‘This will help you recover.’ And he rubbed some cream on my arm … gave me some flaxseed oil, man. It’s like, ‘Whatever, dude.'”

Bonds was shown a vial that the government believed had contained the Clear. Bonds insisted it was for flaxseed oil. He said he had ingested the substance by placing a couple of drops under his tongue — the prescribed method for taking the BALCO steroid but hardly the common way to down flaxseed oil.

“And I was like, to me, it didn’t even work,” he told the grand jury. “You know me, I’m 39 years old. I’m dealing with pain. All I want is the pain relief, you know? … I never asked Greg. When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, ‘Whatever.’ It was in the ballpark … in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn’t hide it … . You know, trainers come up to me and say, ‘Hey, Barry, try this.'”

Bonds’s approach was obvious: He didn’t know what he put in his body, he simply ingested whatever substance his trainer gave him. If his trainer told him it was flaxseed oil and arthritis cream, then that’s what it was. To people who knew Bonds’s meticulous and controlling nature, the claim was absurd, but the prosecutors didn’t pursue the point.

An Agent Fightin Steroids Harvests Trash and Turmoil (NYT)
Baseball turned a blind eye (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Bud Selig also should be accountable (Sun-Times)