Juicy details in case against Bonds

SAN FRANCISCO – Federal prosecutors in Barry Bonds’ trial intend to introduce notes seized from Greg Anderson’s house and a clubhouse tape recording of the personal trainer discussing injections in an effort to get around his likely refusal to testify against the home-run king.

Among hundred of pages of documents unsealed Wednesday was a transcript of a taped conversation between Bonds’ personal trainer and then-personal assistant discussing injecting the slugger, plus a list of current and former major leaguers, including Jason Giambi, who are scheduled to testify for the government at Bonds’ upcoming trial.

Among the evidence was a positive test for amphetamines in 2006 in a urine sample Bonds gave to Major League Baseball.

Bonds’ attorneys want all that evidence suppressed, and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is to rule today. Anderson, jailed several times for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury, appears to be at the heart of the government’s case.

Steve Hoskins, Bonds’ childhood friend and personal assistant, tape recorded a 2003 conversation at the Pac Bell clubhouse with Anderson in which injections are discussed.

Anderson: “No, what happens is, they put too much in one area, and what it does, it ’ill, it ’ill actually ball up and puddle. And what happens is, it actually will eat away and make an indentation. And it’s a cyst. It makes a big (expletive) cyst. And you have to drain it. Oh yeah, it’s gnarly … Hi Benito … oh, it’s gnarly.”

Hoskins: “He said his (expletive) went … that’s why he has to, he had to switch off of one cheek to the other. Is that why Barry’s didn’t do it in one spot, and you didn’t just let him do it one time?”

Anderson: “Oh no. I never. I never just go there. I move it all over the place.”

The former San Francisco Giants star is charged with lying to a grand jury in 2003 when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. Federal prosecutors allege that Bonds knowingly used steroids, including a once undetectable designer drug.

His trial is scheduled to start March 2.

Bonds lawyers moved to suppress 24 drug tests from 2000-06; more than two dozen drug calendars; BALCO log sheets; handwritten notes; opinion evidence on steroids, human growth hormone, THG, EPO and Clomid; witness descriptions of Bonds’ “physical, behavioral and emotional characteristics” – including acne on his back, testicle shrinkage, head size, hat size, hand size, foot size and sexual behavior – recorded conversations that didn’t include Bonds; and voice mails allegedly left by Bonds on the answering machine of former girlfriend Kimberly Bell.

Bonds’ lawyers also want to prevent the jury from hearing evidence of at least four positive steroid tests they argue can’t be conclusively linked to Bonds because of how they were processed.

According to records prosecutors took from BALCO, Bonds tested positive on three separate occasions in 2000 and 2001 for the steroid methenelone in urine samples; he also tested positive two of those three times for the steroid nandrolone. Prosecutors want to use those test results to show Bonds lied when he told a grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.

In addition, a government-retained scientist, Dr. Don Catlin, said he found evidence that Bonds used the designer steroid THG upon retesting a urine sample Bonds supplied as part of baseball’s anonymous survey drug testing in 2003, when the designer drug was non yet detectable. Federal investigators seized them in 2004 from the private laboratory used by Major League Baseball before they could be destroyed, which the players were promised.

Catlin said the sample also tested positive for Clomid and foreign testosterone.

Included in the evidence was a letter from baseball independent drug administrator Bryan Smith that Bonds tested positive for an amphetamine during a drug test on July 7, 2006. There also was a letter from baseball commissioner Bud Selig to Bonds that Aug. 1 informing him of the positive test and telling him that he will be subject to six more tests over a one-year period.

The New York Daily News reported on that test on Jan. 11, 2007, saying Bonds attributed the positive test to a substance he had taken from teammate Mark Sweeney’s locker.

The government said the Giants had Bonds give blood samples to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center and to Chandler Regional lab, and the government obtained those test results. The government said liver enzymes and cholesterol levels in those results are indicative of steroid use.

The court documents also show prosecutors plan on calling to the witness stand Giambi of the Oakland Athletics, along with his brother and former major leaguer Jeremy Giambi. The government also plans to call Bobby Estalella, Marvin Benard and Benito Santiago, all former Bonds teammates.

Anderson also worked with those players and maintained so-called doping calendars for them. Prosecutors allege that Anderson maintained a similar calendar for Bonds.

Documents taken from Anderson’s house detail steroid distribution from Anderson to Bonds from 2000-03, according to a government brief. And Anderson also discusses steroids with Hoskins during that March 2003 clubhouse chat.

Court papers stated that Hoskins recorded the conversation on his own initiative with no government prompting. And federal prosecutors said that Hoskins will be a key witness at the trial.

Bonds and Hoskins had a nasty falling out after slugger went to the FBI with accusations Hoskins stole from him.

According to Hoskins, the following excerpt took place between himself and Anderson in approximately March of 2003 at Pac Bell Park near the defendant’s locker.

“Anderson: … everything that I’ve been doing at this point, it’s all undetectable.

“Hoskins: Right.

“Anderson: “See, the stuff that I have … we created it. And you can’t, you can’t buy it anywhere. You can’t get it anywhere else. But, you can take it the day of and pee …

“Hoskins: Uh-huh.

“Anderson: And it come up with nothing.

“Hoskins: Isn’t that the same (expletive) that Marion Jones and them were using?

“Anderson: Yeah same stuff, the same stuff that worked at the Olympics.

“Hoskins: Right, right.

“Anderson: And they test them every (expletive) week.

“Hoskins: Every week. Right, right.

“Anderson: So that’s why I know it works. So that’s why I’m not even trippin’. So that’s cool.”

Bonds’ attorneys argue “there is simply no portion of what Anderson states in reply to Hoskins’ questioning that unambiguously refers to Mr. Bonds.”