KEY POINTS:
Barry Bonds may have played the last game of one of baseball's most extraordinary careers as the American home-run king prepares to face federal charges he lied to a grand jury about using performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds will plead not guilty to four counts of perjury and one of
obstruction of justice announced Friday, stemming from his testimony in a separate investigation of a drug laboratory catering to athletes, his lawyers say.
Yet months of possible legal wrangling, possible action by Major League Baseball and the public relations nightmare he carries with him could well spell the end of Bonds' 22-year career.
"Barry Bonds has played his last game, worn his last major league uniform, defied the truth for the last time," wrote ESPN.com sports writer Gene Wojciechowski.
Writers across the US generally agreed that Bonds, a free agent after the San Francisco Giants decided to cut ties with him after the 2007 season, was unlikely to find a new major league team.
Yet, the director of Balco, the lab at the centre of a global doping scandal, said that blood and urine samples the player gave the lab would fall short of standards needed to convict him of perjury.
"It's a smoking gun without any bullets," said Victor Conte, who denies he provided performance-enhancing drugs to Bonds
An indictment issued on Friday for perjury and obstruction of justice cites Bonds' positive tests for performance-enhancing substances as evidence that he did not tell the truth in 2003 before the Balco grand jury investigating doping in baseball, football and track and field athletes.
The criminal investigation into Balco uncovered evidence that Bonds had tested positive for the drugs which give athletes enhanced power, endurance and ability to heal.
The combined counts carry a maximum potential sentence of 30 years, but Bonds could end up serving only a few years because he has no prior offences, legal experts said.
Bonds, 43, has been ordered to court on December 7 and will likely be released on bail.
Conte, who has already served prison time in the case, said Bonds and his personal trainer Greg Anderson visited Balco on several occasions on Saturdays in 2000 and 2001 to submit blood and urine samples for tests including for steroids and growth hormones.
The samples were sent to an outside lab, coded likely by a number rather than the name of the athlete. Yet Conte said that by paying only US$80 ($107) instead of the usual US$130, higher standards of assuring no one tampered with the samples were not followed.
"There is a serious challenge that will come forward because of a lack of chain of custody of any sort of anabolic steroid-type testing that was done at Balco laboratories," he said. Ralph Kiner, 85, a Hall of Fame slugger, said it is possible a conviction would not bar a player from being selected for the hall in New York. Bonds is eligible for membership five years after he retires.
"When he supposedly, or at least was charged with using steroids, they were not illegal in baseball," said Kiner.
- REUTERS