Bail Bonds

Dave Anderson thinks that the House hearings on steroids in baseball are meaningless without the testimony of Barry Bonds.

Now, I'd argue the hearings are meaningless -- except to heap embarassment on baseball while congressmen bloviate -- with or without Bonds.

But WFAN's Steve Somer's, thinking out loud (as sports talk radio hosts are prone to do), suggested last night that perhaps Bonds wasn't subpoenaed at the request of the Justice Dept, implying that Bonds may be the focus of a criminal investigation that would be hampered if he were to testify before Congress.

Idle speculation, but we traffic in that here.

Of course, Murray Chass has another, simpler explanation for the absence of the future homerun leader.

The Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives has subpoenaed seven current and former players and four officials to appear at the hearing. The committee did not invite or subpoena Barry Bonds because it did not want him to steal the show. Representatives Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, the committee chairman, and Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, its ranking minority member, will be the stars of this show, thank you, and don't you forget it.

But if you would really like to learn more about baseball and steroids, free of the emotional baggage and political grandstanding that lends itself so easily to this topic, check out Will Carroll in his new digs, who has made baseball and medicine a major focus of inquiry for some time now.