Baseball notes
Published 10:56 pm Thursday, November 29, 2007
MLB: Barry Bonds plans to add an attorney to his legal team before his federal court appearance next week, the slugger’s longtime business affairs lawyer said Thursday.
Michael Rains has represented Bonds since the home run king first was subpoenaed in 2003 to testify in front of a grand jury investigating performance-enhancing drug use among elite athletes. Bonds is charged with lying to that grand jury when he testified he didn’t knowingly take steroids and is scheduled to make his first court appearance Dec. 7.
Laura Enos, who has legally advised Bonds on business matters since 1997, said Bonds was negotiating with a high-profile lawyer with federal experience to help in defense against five felony charges of perjury and obstruction.
“This has been in the works for six months,” Enos said. “Mike doesn’t have a deep bench, and he doesn’t have a lot of federal experience.”
She declined to discuss names, though San Francisco attorney John Keker’s name was mentioned throughout the legal community here as the likely candidate.
TV: HBO Films is planning to turn a best selling book about Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use and the federal government’s wide-ranging probe into performance enhancing drug use in sports into a movie, one of the book’s authors said Thursday.
Lance Williams, a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, said that Ron Shelton has been tapped to direct the flick and will co-write the script with “Tin Cup” partner John Norville once the Hollywood writers strike is settled.
The planned movie based on the book “Game of Shadows” was first reported Wednesday by Variety.
MLB: A delegate to the annual USA Track and Field convention has called on baseball to treat Barry Bonds as track federations treated Marion Jones: take away the records.
“Baseball’s drug policy is a sham,” said Robert Weiner, who also served as spokesman for the White House National Drug Policy Office from 1995 to 2001. “Baseball should learn from track and field.”
Bonds has been charged with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury about his steroid use. Jones pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators. She has returned her Olympic gold medals, and the International Association of Athletics Federation annulled all her results dating to September 2000.
METS: The New York Mets need pitching and they’d love to land Johan Santana. Not enough to trade star shortstop Jose Reyes, though.
“Jose Reyes is one of our core players,” general manager Omar Minaya said Thursday. “I don’t see us trading Jose Reyes for one of those guys being mentioned. It just doesn’t make sense for us.”
The Minnesota Twins are listening to trade offers for Santana, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who can become a free agent after next season. The Mets are one of several big-budget teams thought to be interested, including the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels.
The Mets think they might have a package of prospects that could bring back a top starting pitcher, but Minnesota may want the 24-year-old Reyes included in any potential deal for Santana.
“All those guys that are being mentioned in the market, as far as trade market, we’ve been in contact with these guys, on a regular basis,” Minaya said. “No club has told us, hey, forget it, you’re not in. Now maybe they have told us, hey, for you to be in, you have to have this player. And we can say, hey, well thank you very much, but we’re not going to be in with this player’s name in it.”
ROCKIES: Yorvit Torrealba is staying in Colorado, agreeing to a two-year deal worth about $7 million with a mutual option for 2010. Torrealba, who filed for free agency after helping the Rockies reach the World Series, was set to sign a three-year contract for about twice the money with the New York Mets this month. The Rockies got back into the mix when that deal fell apart and the Mets traded for Johnny Estrada instead.
Associated Press
