LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – Barry Bond’s trainer would have watched the record home run, but it was from jail, not at the game itself.
Forty miles from the fireworks, the streamers and all the flashbulbs, Greg Anderson could only hope to commandeer the television.
As an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, Anderson has access to a TV, but he must share it with the other inmates in his pod. Rarely does everyone in the pod choose to watch an entire baseball game.
Over the past month, Anderson has followed Barry Bonds mainly through highlight shows and newspapers that arrive three days late. Paula Canny, Anderson’s lawyer and friend, provides updates when she visits.
“Greg will be ecstatic when Barry breaks the record,” she said recently.
If Anderson has not heard, Bonds hit his 756th home run Tuesday night, passing Hank Aaron for the career record. Bonds raised his arms over his head. The crowd stood. Even players on the opposing team, the Washington Nationals, applauded.
Anderson, Bonds’s former trainer, was a specter above it all. He has been in jail since November because he will not testify about Bonds’s suspected steroid use.
For the past month, Anderson has seen snippets of the chase but missed the details – Bonds throwing a party before the All-Star game, Bonds pitching to the kids in a softball game, Bonds praying with the Reverend Jesse Jackson at Wrigley Field.
Bonds has been treated as a hero and a villain. At home in San Francisco, he has been saluted on the scoreboard by Michael Jordan, Joe Montana and Muhammad Ali. On the road, he has been confronted with inflatable syringes and foam asterisks.
