Roger Clemens, left, stops to autograph a baseball for a fan outside the U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday. ((Mark Wilson/Getty Images))

Seems you can't put a baseball star on trial without a mistrial.



"It's a huge waste of federal taxpayer dollars at this point," he said Thursday during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I don't know the tab, but probably tens of millions of dollars at this point."


As baseball's gray eminence, Yogi Berra, would say, "it's like deja vu all over again."


Conte, the BALCO president, was sentenced to four months in prison and four months' home confinement after pleading guilty in 2005 to one count of steroid distribution and one count of money laundering. Bonds was a BALCO client, its most famous.

Conte has two points to make on Clemens.

"Let me just say it's my opinion and only my opinion that Roger Clemens is guilty," he offered.

But that doesn't mean he thinks it should be a criminal matter.

"I believe that there are higher and better tasks than these trophy hunts of trying to take these big-name athletes and make examples of them," Conte said. "Regardless of whether or not I think he's guilty or not, we've reached a point where enough is enough and it's time to move on.


When IRS Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, surfing through BALCO's trash in 2002 or 2003, found a photograph of Conte and Bonds together in the magazine Muscle & Fitness, it sparked a legal pursuit that's still ongoing.

Like a Rube Goldberg machine, one led to another. The BALCO investigation led to the book "Game of Shadows." A week after the book was published in March 2006, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig hired former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to investigate steroids.

Mitchell published his report in December 2007, implicating Clemens based on statements from the pitcher's former trainer, Brian McNamee, who was forced to cooperate by federal agents after he was tied to steroids by former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski. Clemens' denials over the following week prompted a congressional committee to ask the pitcher and McNamee to testify, leading to a February hearing where Clemens repeated that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. The was followed by a referral to the Justice Department, a grand jury investigation and an indictment last August.


Across the country, a different set of prosecutors face an Aug. 26 hearing when Bonds' lawyers will argue that U.S. District Judge Susan Illston should throw out the one conviction against the seven-time Most Valuable Player — that he obstructed justice when he gave an evasive answer to a grand jury in December 2003.

Bonds' prosecutors haven't decided whether to retry the three hung counts. The jury couldn't come to a unanimous verdict on charges he made false statements when he denied using steroids and human growth hormone and said he allowed only doctors to inject him. But it convicted him of giving an evasive statement when asked whether his trainer, Greg Anderson, ever gave him "anything that required a syringe to inject yourself with?"

Bonds' rambling reply stated that "I became a celebrity child with a famous father." His lawyers argue that he can't be convicted of that, partly because moments later he was asked "Did either Mr. Anderson or Mr. Conte ever give you a liquid that they told you to inject into yourself" and Bonds responded with a simple: "No."

Just before closing arguments, one of Bonds' lawyers, Dennis Riordan, addressed the possibility of a conviction on the allegedly evasive statements contained in the jury instructions, saying it "would be utterly a farce."


"I just think it's time for those that make these types of decisions to make a higher and better use of federal taxpayer dollars," he said.

Walton also had the economics on his mind.

"We've expended a lot of your taxpayer's money to reach this point," he told the jurors before sending them home.


"I'm no legal expert, but you want it to be behind him," he said. "Obviously, the more attention that's paid to that, it's just negative for the game in general."