If you watched closely enough, there was one sure sign that the Barry Bonds case would arrive at an indictment. For two and-a-half years the story was told of one man’s obsession that became one nation’s possession.

IRS agent Jeff Novitzky was watching a San Francisco Giants baseball game at a bar with a friend and every time Barry Bonds came to the plate Novitzky scoffed, grumbled and swore. In his head Bonds represented everything wrong with the game that Jeff Novitzky thought belonged to him. Repeatedly, the story goes Novitzky said something close to, “I know he’s dirty, I know it and I’ll prove it.”

And from that nexus came the investigation into Barry Bonds’ alleged tax evasion and his knowing use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

But somewhere in the last 18 months this accepted beginning of the Bonds investigation disappeared from print, disappeared from the lips of those who chronicled the tale as it progressed to November 18, 2007 or, “indictment day.” Sometime in the last 18 months the Bonds story became so serious that there was no longer room for its quixotic beginning. Mention it to a writer today and he will look at you as if he just swallowed something old and bitter – like the truth.

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