Barry Bonds took the day off yesterday, but he did take time to call Bob Costas a "midget."

"You mean that little midget man who absolutely knows (expletive) about baseball?" Bonds asked rhetorically.

This was in response to an interview Bob Costas had on his HBO show with a chemist named Patrick Arnold who invented the designer steroid, the Clear. In this interview the chemist stated he believes that Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield took the Clear. The Clear could not be detected by steroid tests at the time. Costas has long been outspoken in his belief that Bonds took steroids.

Victor Conte, founder of BALCO, immediately responded saying that he never supplied Barry Bonds with steroids and that it would not make any logical sense for him to take the undetectable Clear at the time because MLB was not testing for steroids anyway until 2003. In comparison track & field athletes have been tested for steroids for a long time. Conte has said that track star Marion Jones did use steroids.

Arnold also stepped back from his comments. Yesterday he stated that he could not say for sure if Bonds used the Clear or not.

"To me it was always implicit that an athlete that Victor was working with was on the program," Arnold told ESPN Radio yesterday morning. This statement contradicts what Arnold had said previously that Conte had told him that Bonds was on "the Program."

Labels: Barry Bonds