Barry Bonds Perjury Indictment Is Pure USDoJ Media Ploy

Since Grits has discussed steroid testing quite a bit recently and did a reader poll on the topic, I wanted to comment briefly on the Barry Bonds' perjury indictment related to alleged (but extremely likely) steroid use. To be clear, from everything I've seen, Bonds is a big jerk. I don't like him much, and I wish Hank Aaron still held the home run record. But the much-hyped federal indictments seem unmerited, and if I were a betting man, I'd wager Bonds and his high-priced legal talent will win out at the end of the day.

Leaving aside the personalities and issues in the specific case, though, Bonds' indictments raise a number of other issues for me that deserve wider discussion.

First, why are my tax dollars even investigating steroids in professional baseball? It seems to me Congress and the DoJ got involved only because of the media hype. Isn't this taking the Interstate Commerce Clause a little far?

Second, I remain unconvinced that there's a serious health threat to steroid use that isn't taken on knowingly and with full consent from those taking them. Indeed, some of the admitted steroid users, like Marion Jones and some of the European cyclists, are among the best-conditioned athletes on the planet. It's one thing for Major League Baseball to ban steroids to protect the purity of competition (though if that's the case, they've failed, since hundreds of players besides Bonds have allegedly also used steroids in the current generation of athletes). But it's quite another for the long arm of the federal government to intervene when there's little health or safety threat. I mean, don't they have a war to run, or something?

Third, can we please stop pursuing pointless politicized prosecutions against high profile figures for "perjury" when no one was charged with any underlying crime? Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, how many times have we seen this, now? Stop, please.

Fourth, media hype surrounding Bonds shows race still matters. The underlying issues are not racial, but the public's reaction has contained extra vitriol that you don't see when we're talking about Mark McGwire.

Fifth, as Kuff said, the statistics are simply a record of history. Talk of wiping Bonds' stats off the books makes no more sense than pretending games played by "Shoeless" Joe Jackson never happened. The advantage gained by Bonds using steroids wasn't nearly as great, IMO, as the advantage Babe Ruth enjoyed not having to face pitchers from the Negro League. But we see no asterisk on Ruth's stats, or other MLB greats from before league integration.

Finally, if we're going to prioritize law enforcement resources based on where they get the most bang for the buck, as I've argued before, the feds should be focusing on steroid abuse in law enforcement, not in professional or amateur sports. When police officers engage in black market activities it exposes them to blackmail and corruption opportunities that create a real public safety dilemma. There is simply no such public interest benefit from the government investigating athletes.

The New York Times quoted a law prof saying a "message has to be sent to the public” when a high profile person appears to get away with defying federal prosecutors and the grand jury. But in my experience, nearly every time someone tells you a lawsuit or a proposed law is intended to "send a message," the result is bad public policy because public relations goals inevitably override the pursuit of justice.

That's what's happened here, and it's why I hope federal prosecutors pursuing this wind up with mud in their eye.

Send Bonds to the Hall of Fame, forget all the talk of an asterisk, and let's start to have a more serious discussion about whether steroids do any demonstrable harm that justifies federal intervention, and whether there might be more serious problems out there to worry about.

MORE: Big Tom over at Houston's Clear Thinkers rounds up more Bonds-related editorializing in the blogosphere.