Barry Bonds and Eldrick T. Woods

There is a scene in the classic 1967 movie, “A Guide For The Married Man,” in which Bobby Morse is explaining to Walter Matthau what one is to do when caught by your wife in bed with another woman.

As Morse describes the scene we see Terry Thomas in bed with Jayne Mansfield. In walks his wife who instantly starts screaming. Without missing a beat, Terry Thomas gets out of bed, gets Ms. Mansfield to help him make it; helps her into her clothes and then puts his own on; walks her to the door, kisses her goodbye, then walks back into the house and sits down in his living room chair and begins reading the newspaper.

His wife, who has been screaming the whole time, finally says, “Well, how do you explain this?”

“Explain what?” he answers very calmly.

She looks around. There’s no sign of another woman. The bed is made. There is absolutely no evidence that he has anything to explain. She finally looks at him and says, “What do you want for dinner?”

Which brings us to Barry Bonds and Eldrick T. Woods.

Apparently they saw the movie. Either that or they (and you can throw Roger Clemens and others in here too) have figured out that if you simply deny everything, SOMEONE will ask you what you want for dinner.

Raise your hand if you are among those who believe for one second that Bonds didn’t know what he was doing when he took steroids. While you are laughing, consider this: a jury of 12 of Bonds’ peers (a misuse of terminology on every level since Bonds would be the first to tell you he has no peers) could not conclude that Bonds perjured himself when he told a grand jury he ‘accidentally,’ took steroids that just about doubled his head-size and turned him from a Hall of Fame player destined to hit about 500 home runs into baseball’s tainted all-time home run king. (lower-case letters intentional).

And yet, after hearing weeks of evidence from, in some cases, first hand witnesses, the jury only convicted Bonds on an obstruction of justice charge for being ‘evasive,’ while answering questions. The vote on one of the perjury counts was 11-1 for conviction. My guess is that the woman who voted not to convict would have voted against conviction if Bonds had walked into the jury room and said, “are you kidding, of course I lied, I was counting on SOMEONE being stupid enough to buy my story.”

She probably wouldn’t have found him to be a credible witness.

Bonds should write her a check for at least $1 million because she single-handedly kept him out of jail. He won’t do jail time on the obstruction charge but if he had been convicted of perjury, there would have been no choice but to give him SOME jail time. That perp walk would have been recorded forever and would have been seen for generations far more often than Bonds’ 756th home run.

But he got off. No, he won’t go to The Hall of Fame but not going to the Hall of Fame as a punishment is a lot better than going to jail and THEN not going to the Hall of Fame. So, Bonds got off the way so many famous people get off. Heck, there were people then and there are people now who think Richard Nixon was railroaded out of office by the media in 1974. I know this for a fact because on the day Nixon resigned there was a New York Times headline that said, “Nixon’s Last Bastion of Support.” The dateline was Shelter Island, New York—where I spent summers as a kid. Many of the people quoted in that story were members of Gardiner’s Bay Country Club, where I worked in the pro shop. Several had complained to my boss about my “Impeach the Cox-Sacker,” bumper sticker.

No doubt there are people who think the media has railroaded Bonds because he’s been a pain-in-the-neck to deal with through the years. Or that the federal government was making some kind of example of him. I would suggest reviewing the testimony. I would also ask how then you explain what is happening to Clemens, who was actually very good with the media—especially later in his career. My sense of the federal government is this: If they think you’re lying, they come after you. Period.

As for my friend Mr. Woods, here is my second question of the day: Those of you who still think he’s ‘changed,’ since November 27, 2009 please raise your hands too. Maybe his golf has changed, but Tiger is still Tiger: dismissive (see Macatee, Bill—attempted post-round interview on Sunday at Augusta) arrogant, unwilling to do even the smallest things to make himself a little more fan friendly (please, go ahead and tell me it would kill him to play the par-three at The Masters. And don’t give me the, ‘he doesn’t want to change his pre-tournament routine,’ line. He changes it every year and, fact is, he hasn’t won there since 2005 so why NOT change?).

And yet, like with Nixon and Bonds and Clemens, there are still people buying Tiger’s lines. His new thing is to say he can’t change his schedule and can’t play more golf because he needs time with his children. It’s a good line—one that’s tough to argue with. Of course it doesn’t explain why he was seen in The Bahamas gambling a few days before going to Augusta; then, after nine days in Augusta, jumped on a plane to go to China to sell Nike product a few minutes after his last blow-off line to Macatee.

Look, you want to go to the Bahamas and have fun—go for it. You want to be a Nike salesman and go halfway around the world—heck, maybe it’s in your contract. But DON’T do those things and then try to tell us how much you miss your kids. In fact, during an infomercial last Thursday on Golf Channel (which posed as an ‘interview,’) during which viewers had to sit and listen to the president of Nike golf pitch the new spring products right there on-camera with Tiger, co-host Erik Kuselias, trying to make the interview at least semi-legitimate, asked Woods about being away from his kids so much.

“That’s why Skype is so great,” Tiger said with a straight face. “It’s almost like being there.”

I am not a crook.

I didn’t know what I was putting in my body.

Skype is just like being there.

What do you want for dinner Mr. President? Barry? Tiger?