Legal News

Another Former MLB?er Testifies Against Bonds

By Nathan Koppel

Today is one of the high points in the nation’s calendar: the opening day of baseball!  Ah, can’t you just smell the aroma of grilled hot dogs?

A fouler smell, alas, was wafting from the San Francisco federal courtroom yesterday where the Barry Bonds perjury trial continued to explore the finer points of syringes and strange chemical enhancers but, thankfully, was seemingly free of pg-rated anatomical references.

The star witness yesterday was Randy Velarde (pictured), a former infielder for the Oakland A’s and New York Yankees — and a customer of Greg Anderson, the trainer who allegedly injected Bonds with steroids. Here’s a recap of the action from the San Francisco Chronicle and one from the New York Times.

Velarde, the last player expected to testify for the government, said that Anderson gave him steroid injections during the 2002 season. Velarde, though, did not indicate that he had discussed steroids with Bonds, who has been charged with lying to a grand jury about his alleged steroids use, according to the Chronicle.

Bonds has claimed that Anderson told him he was giving Bonds non-banned substances. And the judge in the case, according to the Times, has told jurors they should not assume Bonds knew he was taking steroids just because other players say they did.

Velarde said that Anderson initially gave him pills to improve his performance, but they were ineffective, according to the Times. "I told him I wasn't getting anywhere with the pills, and he said the next stop was injections," Velarde  testified.

Prosecutors yesterday told federal judge Susan Illston that they would call 3 more witnesses, including Dr. Don Catlin, who is expected to testify that a test of a urine sample Bonds gave to Major League Baseball in 2003 indicated that Bonds was using a type of undetectable steroid sold by the Bay Area laboratory that is at the center of the scandal, according to the Chron.

As a lifelong Houston Astros fan, we feel that we would be remiss if we did not use this occasion to offer a bold prediction for the coming season: The ‘Stros will, without a doubt, not get close to contending.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 31, 2011 (boomark / email).