SAN FRANCISCO, (Reuters) – Baseball’s home run king admitted to using steroids and even complained about the pain from receiving injections, an old friend of Barry Bonds testified in the tarnished star’s perjury trial yesterday.Steve Hoskins, a childhood friend of the slugger and former business partner, said he first became aware that the former Major League Baseball player was using steroids when Bonds asked him to investigate their health effects.
“He complained that his butt was sore from the injections,” Hoskins told the court. Dressed in a grey suit, Bonds, 46, who has pled not guilty, took notes as Hoskins testified about a relationship that dates back to a friendship between their fathers, who were professional athletes in San Francisco.
The Bonds case is one of the last strands in a lengthy investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. Doping revelations have tarnished the reputation of baseball, known as America’s national pastime.
Hoskins said he saw Bonds and his personal trainer Greg Anderson go into a bedroom and when Anderson emerged he was holding a syringe. In another instance, Bonds said if Anderson would not inject him that he would do it himself, according to Hoskins.
Later, prosecutors played a recording that Hoskins secretly made of Anderson talking about injecting athletes.
In the recording, Hoskins asks why it’s important to change injection sites, and Anderson says injecting too much in one place can cause cysts. “Is that why Barry didn’t just shoot it in his butt all the time?” Hoskins asks.
