This just in ... Busted!
This is already evolving as one of those "where were you when you heard'' moments in sports. Right up there with Len Bias' death, Magic Johnson announcing he had HIV, Barbaro at the Preakness, the Auburn Hills fight, Tyson biting Holyfield's ear and Joe Theismann's leg. Just off the top of my head, those are the ones that I remember. For the record, I can't remember at all where I was when Pete Rose got the boot.
Oh, uh, I'm talking about Bonds being indicted.
I can say that when I called a friend at home last night about an hour and a half after it broke, he had not heard about it - and we immediately spent the next 44 minutes 42 seconds talking about it. (Thank goodness for cell-phone timers.)
Where was I? At home, just finishing taping a radio spot (every Thursday on WOL in D.C., airs around 8:30 p.m., don't miss it!) and was yakking with the host and idly glancing at ESPN News, with the sound down because Dick Vitale was talking. In the corner, though, under "Breaking News,'' there it was: "Bonds indicted on Federal Charges.'' (Capitalized just like that.)
Into the phone I said: "Why am I looking in the corner of the screen on ESPN News and seeing 'Bonds indicted on Federal Charges'?''
The response: "What?!?!?''
I started flipping to the other ESPN nettworks, then to the CNN stations. He ran to his computer. It wasn't even up on any sites yet, even ESPN's. He found it on the AP wire. (Irony: at that moment, on the site of the very paper that started it all, the San Francisco Chronicle, the lead item was Trent Dilfer replacing Alex Smith at quarterback for the next 49ers game; in a box further down, under Latest AP News, was an item titled "BBN-AP News Alert.'' That's wire-service code for a story on National League baseball of the very highest priority. It was a two-paragraph Bonds story, the first version they could crank out, but you couldn't tell until you clicked on it.)
Five minutes later, CBSSports.com had a box at the top of the screen, but not a story, just a headline and one sentence. In another minute or so, USA Today's site had a headline stretched across the top of its site, as if war had broken out.
"They finally got Capone,'' I said. "They got John Gotti. They took long enough,'' he said.
I e-mailed someone at another paper, who replied that the newsroom "just went into overdrive.'' Now it was spreading, like a virus. Within no less than about 15 minutes, it was on every newspaper's front page, not the sports page.
I started clicking around to radio stations. I admit I was surprised to hear almost no gloating. The one example I heard was from the update reader on Sportstalk 980 in D.C., who prefaced his report with, "There is good news in baseball today ...'' No one else was treating it like good news. The dominant reaction of various hosts -- I didn't hear callers right away -- was amazement of what was unfolding. No I-knew-its, no I-told-ya-sos, just shock that it happened, when it happened and what it meant.
To ESPN's credit, because it makes itself such an easy target sometimes, it proved the value of having a dedicated headline-news network. They've gone all Bonds all the time, without interrupting the preseason NIT basketball game or the Oregon-Arizona game on other networks. They called in everybody --as I write this, Victor Conte is on. They now have more legal experts and steroid investigators on staff than the Justice Dept. By the way, that includes Mark Fainaru-Wada, who just this week went from the Chronicle to ESPN and has been on TV more in the last couple of hours than he has in all the post-Game of Shadows years combined.
Eventually, I wrote about it for tomorrow's Sun. Back with more then. I am prepared for the possibility that by the time the paper hits the street, things will have changed enough to make everything I wrote completely wrong. So factor that in.
Comments
No offense but this doesn't rank with any of those stories you mentioned. Bias' death was shocking. Bonds is a liar, jerk and despicable person since his days at Arizona State.
He grew up in a privileged world as the son of a famous player and unfortunately didn't use capitalize on that opportunity to be a good person. Instead he is an arrogant me first athlete representing the worst of athletes.
I'd be surprised if he spends any time in jail but I sure wouldn't shed any tears for him and I'm already sick of the stories about it.
Rich
Posted by: Rich | November 16, 2007 12:07 AM
You cant' be serious mr steele. All those moments were shocking and came out of nowhere. This isn't shocking or suprising. This is barely news. Barry Cheated? No kidding.
Posted by: disco | November 16, 2007 9:10 AM
Rich is correct. He took the word right out of my mouth, this is about as suprising and Sidney Ponson gettnig another DUI.
Posted by: double b | November 16, 2007 9:24 AM
When Len Bias died I felt like I had been punched in the gut. When the Bonds story broke I raised my eyebrows for a second or two and then went about my day. That Len Bias could die so young, cutting short the life of a young man so blessed with talent and humor and potential was to me unfathomable. That the surly Bonds finally got taken down a notch or two for his steadfast refusal to come clean was nearly inevitable.
Posted by: Beerman Cold Beer | November 16, 2007 9:45 AM
As the other said, no shock here. My first reaction was "Why'd they wait so long?"
Add to you list Dale Earnhardt's death. Yeah, I saw the wreck. Didn't look too bad at the time. His death was a MAJOR SHOCK. Barry being indicted? Not so much.
Posted by: Larry | November 16, 2007 11:44 AM
I admit I'm surprised that fewer readers say they were surprised. My shock came from the timing. After four years, after the grand jury session was extended so many times, after Greg Anderson sat in jail all that time refusing to testify, after all those seasons came and went and Bonds set the record and the free-agent signing season began and discussion grew about where he might play in 2008, after Marion Jones got busted, after a time frame was set for when the Mitchell investigation report would be released, and after it seemed the federal investigation had come up with nothing new in a very long time - how could everybody now insist that they "knew'' this day was coming? Nobody else but me thought that Bonds would wriggle out of it with nothing sticking to him?
That's what shocked me, that out of the blue, the news fell out of the sky that the guy who has dodged the bullet long enough to set the record and was planning to set his sights on 3,000 hits suddenly had the rug pulled out from under him. No warning, no leak, no tease, the way it's been with everything else in this case. Just bam! Got 'im.
Some of you out there must have felt the same way.
Posted by: David Steele | November 16, 2007 2:04 PM
Way off base, this story is barely a blip on anyone's radar screen. Palmerio's suspension had more shock vaule than this.
Posted by: Homer J | November 16, 2007 2:16 PM
We all knew it was going to happen,one day. Baseball just used the opportunity to make a ton of money this past summer with all the coverage and talk about baseball with Bonds still playing. Now everyone has their money(owners/players/media partners and business owners). Bonds thought it would all go away,but now that he is of no use to anybody anyore, he can go make some lawyers a lot richer.
So, as this being a "where were you moment", not even close... Bias, OJ in the Bronco, the space shuttle disasters(2 I remember), Magic, those were memorable... I couldn't tell you when Bonds broke Hanks record or even how many he finished with,but people can tell you where they were when Cal broke the Ironman streak....
So, bye -bye, Barry Bonds, take your trophies and millions of dollars with you,because if they let any of the "Roid- heads" in the Hall, then you had better clear a path for Pete... it is six in one and a half dozen in the other...they all cheated in some fashion
Posted by: Ty | November 17, 2007 4:20 PM
David,
This was not the Pearl Harbor of sports. This was an expected (yes, we didn't know the day because it wasn't leaked to the media for once).
No one likes Bonds, we are sick of the whole scenario and this was not a tradgedy.
Two days later, no one is talking about it as college and pro football took over the headlines. The only thing I'm interested in is who welse gets implicated.
By the way, the Auburn Hills fight? If that is night you remember where you were, I hope you were there, because that was something that doesn't rank on anything but a list of stupid sports moments.
Posted by: EC | November 18, 2007 12:14 PM