Court will hear Barry Bonds’ appeal

Former MLB outfielder and Cooperstown hopeful Barry Bonds is still working on clearing his name, and will get another chance to do so thanks to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bonds appealed last year to have his 2003 obstruction of justice charge -- and last year’s upholding of it -- overturned, and while it took until July for him to get his opportunity, it’s happening.

Bonds had already served out his sentence for the obstruction charge -- one month of electronic monitoring at his home in California -- but the point of this appeal is to wipe his name and the charge from the legal record-books. Whether that would help him on the baseball sides of things, causing people to pay more attention to his work in MLB’s own record-books, is unknown*, but Bonds would at least feel as if legal justice had been served should the 11-judge panel overturn the initial felony charge.

*Who are we kidding, some sports fans will hate Bonds forever no matter what he does with the rest of his life.

According to the Mercury News, Bonds’ lawyers will argue that the source of the obstruction charge, Bonds’ rambling response to a question about former trainer Greg Anderson’s role in Bonds acquisition and use of steroids, is too “broad to amount to a specific crime under obstruction laws.” If they’re convincing enough, Bonds will indeed have his charge overturned and will be cleared of wrongdoing in a legal saga that’s been ongoing for over a decade. Given how long it took just to get the appeal attempt confirmed, though, we likely won’t know how this ends for a while yet.