"The jury reached an absurd verdict Wednesday in the absurd trial of baseball's absurd home run king, Barry Bonds.

The trial of Bonds, which included testimony about his expanding head, shrinking testicles and record-breaking slugging statistics, could not have ended any other way. The real surprise would have been a logical conclusion to the case of a man who said he thought the muscle-growing potions he used were flaxseed oil and arthritic balm.

The verdict was messy, confusing, maddening, insulting – just like the Steroids Era, which drags on and on.

Bonds, who would be the biggest name in the Hall of Fraud, was convicted of a single count of obstruction of justice by a federal jury in San Francisco. But, curiously, the eight women and four men on the jury were deadlocked on the other three counts – that Bonds lied to a grand jury about taking steroids, taking Human Growth Hormone and receiving injections.

It makes no sense that the jury would find Bonds guilty of misleading the grand jury but not of making false statements. There was no other way that he could have obstructed justice; he didn't eat the evidence.

Bonds' lawyers seemed to think the jurors decided Bonds was guilty because he gave an evasive answer to a question about injections by his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who spent a total of 14 months in jail for refusing to testify against Bonds."