Chapter[ VII. Major League Baseball and the BALCO Investigation ]
Section[ B. 2. b. Barry Bonds ]
b. Barry Bonds
In addition to declining an interview in connection with this investigation, Bonds
declined to respond to written questions about his alleged use of performance enhancing
substances.
Harvey Shields was Bonds’s personal trainer between 2000 and 2004 and
continued to provide training services to Bonds as a Giants employee from 2004 through 2006.
He said in an interview that Greg Anderson provided Bonds with a cream to use on his elbow,
which Shields said he believed was an over-the-counter “arthritis cream.” Shields also said that
Anderson provided Bonds with a clear liquid that Bonds ingested by placing drops under his
tongue. Shields did not know where Anderson obtained the clear liquid. When asked how many
times he and Bonds had taken the “clear,” Shields would say only “more than once.” 340
Shields said he believed the clear liquid was flaxseed oil. He claimed to have
taken the clear liquid himself, and he said that it tasted like flaxseed oil he had obtained from
health food stores in the past. Shields’s description of the “clear” is contradicted by the
description provided by Patrick Arnold, the chemist who developed it, who in a television
340 In his first interview with my investigators, Shields claimed to have entered into a
Confidentiality Agreement with Bonds in 2006 that he believed precluded him from disclosing
certain information to our investigation.
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interview said the substance was “sickly bitter” and would never be confused for flaxseed oil by
anyone who had tasted both.341
In their book The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball’s Drug Problems, the authors
Will Carroll and Dr. William Carroll explained that “BALCO was noted to use flaxseed oil as a
delivery agent” for the “clear.” According to the authors, the use of flaxseed oil as a delivery
agent for steroids is widely known in the “steroid underground” because “flaxseed oil can
counteract some of the estrogenic effects of steroid use, such as growth of breasts in men.”342
Shields also accompanied Bonds to BALCO on at least one occasion sometime
“around 2001,” when Bonds and Shields met at BALCO with Bonds’s personal physician,
Dr. Arthur Ting, and BALCO vice president Jim Valente. Once inside, Dr. Ting drew blood
from Bonds and Shields for testing at BALCO. Shields said that BALCO tested the blood
samples for vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Major League Baseball records confirmed that Greg Anderson accompanied
Bonds as his guest during a 2002 All-Star tour in Japan. Because Anderson was Bonds’s guest,
his first-class airfare, hotel, and a daily meal stipend were paid for by Major League Baseball
during the two-week trip.
Peter Magowan told me in an interview that he was in San Diego in February
2004 when he received a telephone call from Bonds to discuss ways to improve the team for the
coming season. Magowan said that at the conclusion of the phone call he said to Bonds “I’ve
really got to know, did you take steroids?” According to Magowan, Bonds responded that when
he took the substances he did not know they were steroids but he later learned they were. Bonds
341 Costas Now, HBO television broadcast, original air date July 24, 2007.
342 Will Carroll & William Carroll, Ed.D., The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball’s Drug
Problems 13 (Ivan R. Dee 2005).
129
said that he took these substances for a period of time to help with his arthritis, as well as
sleeping problems he attributed to concern about his father’s failing health. To emphasize that
he was not hiding anything Bonds added that he used these substances in the clubhouse in the
plain view of others. Bonds told Magowan he used these substances for only a short period of
time and that they “didn’t work.” Magowan recalled asking Bonds whether this was what he
had told the grand jury. Bonds replied yes. Magowan also asked Bonds if he was telling the
truth, and Bonds said he was.
Two days after Magowan’s interview, lawyers for Magowan and the Giants called
a member of my investigative staff. Magowan’s lawyer explained that his client misspoke when
he said that Bonds had said, during their February 2004 telephone call, that he later learned the
substances he had taken were steroids. According to his lawyer, Magowan could only recall
with certainty that (1) Bonds had said he did not knowingly take steroids, and (2) what Bonds
said to Magowan during the call was consistent with what Magowan later read in the
San Francisco Chronicle about Bonds’s reported grand jury testimony.
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