Fallout from Bonds may be big

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – As the World Baseball Classic continues in this island venue, news of the new book about Barry Bonds, “Game of Shadows,” (an excerpt from the book is in the current Sports Illustrated) and his use of performance-enhancing drugs since the late ’90s consumed more talk time than the WBC scores.

With a collection of current and former major league baseball players, managers, coaches, and executives on hand, all believed, even if unwilling to go on the record, that the book’s accusations are most likely true.

Bonds has become the Pete Rose of the new millennium. He denies everything as evidence of his massive use of “cocktail” mixes of performance drugs and steroids continues to build.

Bonds is baseball’s new nightmare. The greatest hope of MLB is that he quits now, before the situation gets uglier, the evidence pile gets higher, and the damage to the game becomes insurmountable.

That scenario is unlikely. Bonds has lived with a chip on his shoulder his entire life. He is not above playing the race card as the pressure mounts on him, just, as according to the new book, he played that card in comments about Mark McGwire as he chased the single-season home run record in 1998.

Bonds is quoted in the book as saying of McGwire, “They’re just letting him do it because he’s a white boy.” Bonds believed McGwire was “juiced,” but nobody was going to say anything because of color.

Evidence that we are near that card being played by Bonds is the growing ring from his camp that he is being singled out unfairly. It’s the old “everybody else is doing it” excuse.

What is scaring many in the game is that when pushed to the wall, Bonds may well be willing to start naming names himself, and most certainly will call for MLB to investigate McGwire, Sosa, and others if they are going to come after him.

There are legal issues as to whether Bonds committed perjury in his testimony before a grand jury investigating the BALCO case. That is the company headed by Victor Conte that apparently supplied steroids and performance drugs to athletes, including Bonds.

Regardless of what does or does not happen in the courts, MLB must now conduct an investigation of its own, just as it did with Rose and the gambling issues.

That is a scary thought for MLB, since Bonds is likely to make the investigation into a real ugly fight. Unfortunately, the whole steroid/drug issue that everyone has tried desperately to ignore has come home to roost. It is not going away.

The integrity of the game, or what’s left of it, is on the line. Bonds cannot be allowed a free ride into the record books, including becoming the all-time home run hitter, without MLB conducting a complete and through investigation that will seek only the truth, wherever that may take one.

Selig has said he will await the publication of the book on the 27th of this month (I have a feeling he already has an advance copy) to decide how to proceed.

Meanwhile, the Bonds group will be filling the press with “poor, poor Barry” stories, other players’ hearts will be racing, fearing what is to come, and all those home runs that Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa have put into the books are going to be challenged.

Buckle up; this is not going to be fun.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.