Barry Bonds

Last season, Jose Bautista shocked the baseball world by coming out of nowhere to launch 54 home runs as a member of the Blue Jays, setting a franchise record, and leading all of baseball in longballs.

In the process, he registered the 42nd season in which a player has hit at least 50 home runs. It is a feat achieved by only 26 different players, and is one of the most revered clubs in all of professional sports.

Just as many kids growing up in the late-80's and 90's, I had a huge collection of baseball cards. This was a few years before it began to cost more for a pack of cards than it did for a gallon of milk. It was also when people collected ball-cards in hopes they would be lucky enough to pull out a card of their childhood hero.  

The scars of MLB's recent past are beginning to heal and fade. The Steroids Era is growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

It's been over six years since Major League Baseball was first embarrassed on Capitol Hill in the "steroids hearings" of March 2005. Over three years have passed since the release of the Mitchell Report.

Despite the march of time, there are still a handful of retired MLB stars who, well, we simply wish would just go away—Jose Canseco and Roger Clemens among them.

Former mistress of Barry Bonds, Kimberly Bell has testified in court.  Bell claimed Bonds told her steroids were the reason behind an elbow injury from 1999.  Bell also told jurors Bonds was violent with her and threatened her on more than one occasion.  In addition, Bell made the assertion that the size of Bonds’ testicles had shrunken.

There's not much to say about Barry Bonds and the legal situation he's wrapped up in. The former “best player in baseball” and current home run champ has been under the microscope of Congress since he claimed to never knowingly use steroids during his 22-year career.

The Barry Bonds trial just concluded its first week of testimony after eight years of buildup, and honestly, nobody should care.

Bonds is not facing trial because of any crime that caused physical harm to another person; he did not perpetrate some great social injustice. No, Barry Bonds is on trial because he took steroids to elevate his game in his quest to rewrite the baseball record books and then lied about it.

During their primes Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey, Jr. were the two greatest hitters of their era. Both second generation ballplayers, having famous fathers who had enjoyed their own successful careers, Bonds and Griffey were lifelong acquaintances that had similar career paths, and comparable numbers through their prime.

While their paths to Major League Baseball were similar, their legacies would wind up very different.

It seems like an eternity since Major League Baseball finally got around to admitting it had a problem of the performance enhancing variety, but in reality it has barely been a half a decade.

Players once thought to be first-ballot Hall of Famers are struggling to garner more than a pittance of support from sports writers and fans alike as the sport carries on the best it can.

Welcome to the moment baseball fans have been waiting for. The trial of Barry Bonds is underway and there is plenty going on.

Bonds, one of the most polarizing figures in baseball over the last century is also now the face of the Steriod Era.

Like it or not, it’s the hat he wears and the government is trying to determine if Bonds is guilty of perjury when it comes to testimony he gave involving performance enhancing drugs.

For those who thought the steroid era in baseball was all but over, Monday reminded them that it is very much alive and once again, rearing its ugly head on America's national pastime.

In a Northern California Federal Courthouse, the trial of former San Francisco Giants slugger, Barry Bonds began.

Bonds isn't on trial for using steroids, he's on trial for lying about using steroids.