Mark Purdy: Bobby Bonds is dragged into the muck at son's perjury trial

At heart, the Barry Bonds perjury trial is still a baseball story about a man and his legacy. And I regret to report that the story has taken a reprehensible turn for the creepy in regard to one of the best San Francisco Giants ever.

I'm not talking about Barry Bonds. I'm talking about his father, Bobby. He died of cancer in 2003. But his ghost is floating in a very unseemly manner through the 19th-floor courtroom of the San Francisco federal building.

Bobby Bonds was a fantastic ballplayer who conquered his alcohol demons to become an excellent hitting coach for the Giants and other major league teams. I knew him some. Not well. I was around him enough to be certain that Bobby would be saddened and disgusted by this week's events on the 19th floor of the federal courthouse in San Francisco.

It all began with the government's opening statement. Prosecutors flashed the jury a visual slide on a large screen. The slide was a picture of Barry Bonds posing for a supplement advertisement with two other men -- his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, and BALCO chief Victor Conte, who masterminded his company's steroid-distribution scheme.

Bonds' attorney, Allen Ruby, quickly tried to counter that image. Ruby used his own opening statement to explain that Bonds had posed for the picture only because Conte had been "kind" to Bobby Bonds while he battled his terminal illness. Conte had provided protein supplements and other holistic supplements to Bobby. Supposedly, Barry just wanted to do Conte a favor.

As Ruby quoted Barry: "I didn't get paid for it or anything."

(Yes, that definitely sounds like Barry. Of course, if Conte was providing discount steroids to Anderson as the government maintains, that could be another reason for such a picture.)

And guess what? Apparently, one dubious mention of Bobby Bonds was not enough. Because on Wednesday morning, a star defense witness also used Bobby as the rationale for a questionable act.

This happened when Steve Hoskins, Bonds' former business partner and friend, took the stand. Hoskins brought along a digital audio recording. Voices on the recording were muffled. But they documented a 2003 discussion between Hoskins and Anderson in the home clubhouse at AT&T Park.

Slime drips off the two men's conversation. At one point, Hoskins mentions to Anderson that too many steroid injections in the same spot can create a painful cyst and asks if that's "why Barry didn't just shoot it in his butt all the time."

"Oh no, I never just go there," Anderson replies. "I move it all over the place."

(Feel free to dream up your own ugly vision of that.)

Before the audio was played in court, Hoskins was asked why he would ever choose to make such a recording -- and he claimed that it was done for the benefit of Bobby Bonds. During the 2000 season, Hoskins said, he had warned Bobby of his son's steroid use. But Bobby didn't believe it after getting denials from Barry and Anderson.

More than two seasons later, Hoskins said, he took the next step of secretly recording Anderson's words regarding the injections in the hope this would finally convince Bobby of Barry's drug use.

"I was hoping Bobby would be the one that could get Barry to stop doing it," Hoskins said.

So what happened, you ask, when Bobby did hear the recording? He never heard it, Hoskins said. Right about then, Bobby became very ill during his cancer treatment. Hoskins did not want to toss another troublesome element into Bobby's fight against the disease that would claim his life a few months later.

Hoskins' testimony was later shaken by Ruby, who asked a series of questions meant to draw the inference that a nasty business dispute with Barry Bonds was the real reason Hoskins made the recording. The jury will have to decide if that's correct.

But as I watched the whole scene, my thought was this: It is beyond pathetic that Bobby Bonds' memory is being utilized as legal backfill this week. Barry is using his dad's death as an excuse for hanging out with Conte and Anderson. Hoskins is using Bobby as an excuse for making his secret audiotape.

Why couldn't both guys just man up and admit the likely truth? Bonds posed for the picture because he liked what BALCO was doing for him far more than what BALCO was doing for his dad. And Hoskins made the audio recording because he wanted to have some evidence he could use against Bonds, just in case.

I don't know how this trial will turn out. I do know that Bobby Bonds' ghost deserves better. Much better.