"The Barry Bonds trial was supposed to be the culmination of the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which introduced the acronym BALCO and the terms "the clear" and "the cream" into the American sports vocabulary over the last several years.

That investigation began in 2002 with Internal Revenue Service agent Jeff Novitzky digging through a dumpster behind the lab's headquarters in Burlingame, Calif., a few miles south of San Francisco. Building a case that BALCO was using its legitimate marketing of mineral supplements to launder money acquired from illegally distributing steroids, Novitzky would lead a raid of the lab and trainer Greg Anderson's residence, sending the case in late 2003 to a grand jury. There, more than two dozen world-class athletes -- including Bonds, other baseball players and several Olympians -- testified about their involvement with BALCO.

Almost nine years later, Bonds was on the courthouse steps outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building after a jury convicted him of obstruction of justice but could not come to a consensus on any of the three charges of giving false statements to the BALCO grand jury. Bonds -- whose conquests of the single-season and career home run records capped a 22-year career as a baseball superstar -- is the last person being charged, and it appeared the end of the trial would bring some closure to the BALCO case."