October 17, 2004 in Sports

Tape says Bonds used steroids

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Baseball commissioner Bud Selig expressed concern Saturday about fresh allegations that Barry Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 and said they are further cause for a tougher policy on steroid use to avoid tarnishing the game.

Selig told reporters at the American League Championship Series game in Boston that a San Francisco Chronicle story based on a tape recording purportedly of Bonds’ trainer is “just a further manifestation of why we need a very strict steroid policy. Until we have one, we’ll have this kind of situation.”

The Chronicle obtained from an anonymous source a 9-minute recording it said was of Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson, one of four people charged in a steroid scandal involving a Bay area nutritional supplements firm.

The speaker on the tape is heard saying Bonds used an “undetectable” performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 season and boasting that he would be tipped off up to two weeks before random drug testing, the newspaper said. Bonds has denied taking steroids.

Injured fan sues Marlins

A fan sued the Florida Marlins, alleging his face was bloodied by a baseball thrown into the stands by outfielder Juan Pierre during a World Series game last October.

Steve Badillo, 44, claims Pierre hit him with a ball after completing warm-up throws before the fourth inning of Game 4 of the 2003 World Series between the Marlins and the New York Yankees.

Badillo is seeking unspecified damages, The Miami Herald reported.

He claims his nose and right eye were left bloodied and he was hospitalized.

Kline could return in postseason

Ailing St. Louis reliever Steve Kline was unavailable for Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, but Cardinals manager Tony La Russa hopes the left-hander will pitch later this postseason.

“(I’m) optimistic that he would be available in this series sometime,” La Russa said.

Burn the bat, kill the curse

The greatest worry about the auction of the bat Babe Ruth swung to hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium – against the Boston Red Sox, of all teams – is that this brown beauty of a Louisville Slugger could wind up in the wrong hands.

That would be anyone superstitious enough to destroy the bat in a harebrained attempt to end the so-called “Curse of the Bambino” against the Red Sox, 4-1 losers in that early season game at the start of the Yankees’ first world championship season.

The wrong hands also would be anyone greedy enough to chop the bat into pieces to sell it chip by sorrowful chip.

“That would be a tragedy,” said Lee Dunbar, director of collectibles at Sotheby’s.

Whether this “Holy Grail of sports memorabilia” fetches as much as the $3 million paid for the Mark McGwire 70th home run ball or at least $1 million, as Sotheby’s and SportsCards Plus believe it will at their joint auction in New York on Dec. 2, the bat deserves a proper home.

George Steinbrenner ought to buy it for display at Yankee Stadium.

There’s history and more than a touch of magic in this bat, which has been stuffed in a closet or hidden under a bed all these decades since Ruth donated it to a Los Angeles high school batting champion as a newspaper-sponsored prize.

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