In the 15 years I have been covering sports for Newsweek and the seven years I have been writing my "Starr Gazing" column, I have probably written the name "Barry Bonds" more than that of any other athlete. As a genuine fan of the game of baseball, that has not given me much pleasure. Several years ago, when I suggested that Bonds was most likely a cheater and a liar, I took more heat and abuse from readers than I ever have on any subject.

Who was I, they asked, to pass judgment on Bonds without more proof? At the time I wrote back, explaining that folks had apparently confused me with a court of law, I had the proof of my eyes and my brain and was not required to consider concepts like "beyond a reasonable doubt." Still, I was reasonably familiar with performance-enhancing drugs, courtesy of a lot of experience covering Olympics, and everything I knew-—indeed all reason-—convinced me that Bonds was intimately familiar with those things too. Now there will no longer be any confusion about the difference between a columnist and a court of law and Bonds clearly has far more to fear from the judgment of the latter than he did from anything I or any other sportswriter ever wrote.

It is rather strange how his indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice—almost four years after he testified before a federal grand jury investigating the distribution of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs at a lab called BALCO—mirrors Bonds' pursuit of Henry Aaron to become baseball's all-time home run king. As with that record set by Bonds this past summer, the indictment was a long time coming, but it always had a certain inevitability about it. One can't help but suspect that, with reporters saying only an indictment could stop Bonds from catching Aaron, federal prosecutors may have waited so that their motives were not clouded by baseball concerns.

Bonds' lawyer, Mike Rains, saw it coming several years ago, telling Newsweek and others that the government was setting a "perjury trap" for his client. It was not a concept I totally grasped. How can anybody fall for a perjury trap, I wondered aloud, if they didn't perjure themselves? Now Mike Rains, has upped the rhetorical and metaphorical ante, wondering how a Justice Department that can't recognize waterboarding as torture can be trusted to distinguish prosecution from persecution. Before this case is over, federal prosecutors will have to demonstrate that they can hit a curve ball out of the park almost as well as Bonds did.

Perjury cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, especially when words like "knowingly" are sprinkled through the grand jury testimony. In grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonds even admitted using two substances identified as undetecatable BALCO steroids called "the clear" and "the cream", but insisted he believed that they were flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm. However, according to the federal indictment, prosecutors claim to be in possession of drug tests indicating that Bonds took steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. ESPN.com reports that these results came from BALCO's own work-ups on Bonds' urine and blood samples. And prosecutors, armed with records from BALCO, have already won six cases stemming from that investigation. Just last month Olympic star Marion Jones, who for years had denied drug use as vehemently as Bonds has, pled guilty to two counts of lying to federal investigators—and later surrendered the five Olympic medals she won in Sydney.

At the very least, Bonds who has managed for years to maintain a high degree of bluster in the face of these accusations, now has something very serious—he faces up to 30 years in prison—to worry about. Far more serious than whether he will participate in Hall of Fame ceremonies if the Hall displays his record-setting ball branded with an asterisk. Now he must wonder whether he will ever make it to Cooperstown and, even if he does, what a Barry Bonds Hall of Fame plaque might say. Here's guessing that if Bonds makes it there, regardless of what his plaque says, fans will see the name Barry Bonds and read, as baseball blogger Bill Chuck has long written it, B*arry B*onds.