The jury for the federal case against Barry Bonds has been selected.  It's safe to say that I probably wouldn't have made it very far in the selection process. 

Potential jurors were asked, among other things, if they were familiar with Bonds' achievements on the field, had attended Giants games in the past, or were familiar with the Mitchell report.  Yes, yes and yes.  Oh, and not only that, but I'm a Giants fan who has been known to defend Bonds to his friends.  I've got his rookie card in my wallet, your honor; would you like to see it?  Crazy how skinny he was back then, huh?  If jury selection were March Madness, I would have fared about as well as University of Phoenix.

But the feds are not trying to prove that Bonds took PED's, only that he lied to a grand jury when he testified that he unknowingly took them. This is not a referendum on Bonds.  So if I were a juror, could I judge the case and not the man?  

Could I, a Giants fan, be an objective juror in the Barry Lamar Bonds federal trial?

At first it seems easy.  Surely, I could sit in a box, and determine whether or not a man lied, based on evidence presented, right?  The question is whether or not he lied, and it wouldn't take much to convince me of that.  Even as I write this, I think it's kind of ridiculous for Bonds to say he didn't know what was going on when he took PED's.  He either did, or he convinced himself that he didn't.  Or willingly denied that he knew about it while it was happening, or stuck his fingers in his ears and said lalalala as a doctor was injecting centaur DNA into his behind, or some other kind of convoluted self-induced denial.  Either way, it's probably true that he lied.  I wouldn't really need to see a video tape of him planning the ruse in front of a dry-erase board to believe it.  

But when the moment of truth comes, what would the Giants fan in me do?  Me saying "guilty" in that jury room might send him to jail.  Could I send Barry Bonds to jail?  The thought of being partially responsible for sending one of the greatest Giants of all time to prison gives me pause. 

I do realize though, that it would be Bonds himself who lied to the grand jury and would bear responsibility for whatever prison time he faces.  I won't have to be there in that jury room, but if I were I know that the citizen in me would convince the fan in me of that.  

But the citizen in me also knows that this trial, no matter how it turns out, will not help the fan in me, or any fan, or any citizen for that matter, come to terms with the relationship between steroids and baseball.  Barry Bonds can be banned from the game and go to prison for 100 years, but everything that happened from 1985-2010 will still have taken place.  And baseball will still have to do something with that time than just wishing it could be left behind.