The Barry Bonds lie

When the Barry Bonds story broke a couple of weeks ago, I had just headed home for Spring Break and was talking about it with my dad. His response to the story, being an attorney, was that if it wasn't true, Bonds would sue them for libel. If the even a few of the allegations in the book were true, there's no way Bonds would sue, because to bring the suit to trial would likely bring out the final word on Bonds and his steroid usage. As it turns out, Bonds is suing just about everyone involved with Game of Shadows, though interestingly enough he's not suing for libel, but rather because the grand jury transcripts were "illegally possessed and obtained under federal law" (via Deadspin). Of course that count has nothing to do with whether Bonds used steroids or not, and an investigation of this accusation most likely won't expose Bonds to the level scrutiny that a charge of libel against the writers would. Of course, Bonds' plan to sue without suing seems to be working as news outlets like ESPN have picked up the story and run versions of it on their site, not ever mentioning exactly what Barry is suing for and not even mentioning anything about illegal possession of documents until the 6th and 7th paragraphs of the story. Of course, a very conspicuous box on the side of the column trumps their upcoming reality show on Barry Bonds and all of the exclusive quotes from him about how he is soooo not on steroids that the show will have. I'm almost positive that ESPN is the anti-christ of sports news these days.

UPDATE: ESPN changed the headline of the article to "Bonds to sue over book's use of grand jury documents", though all of the links that lead to it (both on their homepage and the MLB homepage) still have the original title "Bonds to sue over book that alleges steroid use," which is what the title of the window the article opens up in reads.

I'm not trying to expose ESPN here or anything like that, I'm just trying to see through the smoke screen that Bonds is putting up, while noting that ESPN would rather pimp its own shows than report sports accurately.