After this weekend, it's going to get harder for us Giants' fans to try and live in our shiny, happy denial land in regards to Barry Bonds and this whole BALCO mess. While most of the 's stories claiming that Barry was taking steroids were "leaked" documents from a supposedly leak-proof Grand Jury, Saturday's Chron blared out to the world that they actually have a tape from 2003 purportedly of Barry's trainer and friend, Greg Anderson, bragging to several people on the phone about all the drugs they've been giving the Big Guy. And no, there's no hard evidence that Barry took any steroids, but the story did have most Giants fans scrambling for some sort of way to explain away the story (like how, on the tape, Anderson comes off as a major-league schmuck). The story got the usual hand-wringing from Commissioner Bud and the usual snide comment from one-time teammate Jeff Kent.

All things considering, it's been a pretty lousy couple of weeks for Barry. He underwent knee surgery, got dissed in a hissy-fit by "friend" Garry Shefield (he stole my personal chef!"), and listened as Giants management once again denied there being any reason to sign somebody to bat behind him (two words- Carlos Beltran). And this morning, Scott Ostler, one of the last remaining sports columnists still left on the Chronicle (yay?) wrote a column saying that due to the cloud that hangs over Barry, he won’t vote for Barry to enter the Hall of Fame While we here at SFist have no idea whether Barry is or has ever been on the juice, we still hope that we will never be in a position to ever have to say "say it ain't say, Barry." Oh, and signing Troy Percival would be nice too.

Chronicle