Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants during a game against the Milwaukee Brewers in San Francisco, Calif., on July 18, 2006.
Fifty-three days after announcing a tentative agreement, the Giants and Bonds completed a contract Monday with a most unusual provision. It says, in essence, that the team can void the deal if Bonds is indicted "for any criminal act" specified in the contract, according to the Associated Press, and that Bonds waives the right to challenge — or to authorize the players' association to challenge — the team's decision. In the baseball business, that's called a cover-your-ass clause, and in the case of Bonds, it makes a lot of sense.
Still, whether indicted or not, the truth is Bonds can probably count on getting paid under his one-year deal with the San Francisco Giants so long as he's chasing the historic record. But once the record is his — or it proves out of reach for his aging body — expect the team to cut and run if the feds actually charge Bonds with wrongdoing.
Bonds is widely suspected of having misled a federal grand jury in 2003 when he allegedly denied knowingly using steroids. The San Francisco Chronicle disclosed evidence supposedly showing that Bonds intentionally took the drugs, and the contract provision is designed to protect the Giants in case prosecutors pursue charges of perjury or related crimes.
That may be all well and good, but Bond's agent, Jeff Borris, apparently doesn't think the provision is enforceable. He told the AP that the collective bargaining agreement between baseball and the players would override the deal between Bonds and the Giants. He's right about the agreement taking precedence, but it is by no means clear that the two deals conflict.
The collective bargaining agreement provides for a uniform contract that sets employment terms for all players. A player and team cannot change it except to increase the minimum salary or to add "special covenants that contain an actual or potential benefit to the player," explains Clark Griffith, a lawyer and sports law professor in Minneapolis, Minn. Bonds would obviously not benefit from either an out-clause for indictments or a waiver of the right to challenge a Giants decision, so both provisions would seem unenforceable.
Yet the uniform contract also allows teams to void a deal if the player misbehaves — meaning the player doesn't act like a good citizen or sportsman, doesn't stay in shape, refuses to play or otherwise breaches the contract. Teams often argue without success that this provision covers a host of sins, but Paul Weiler, a sports law professor at Harvard Law School, says behavior that prompts an indictment is probably just the type of bad citizenship contemplated in the language. Unless Bonds is convicted, though, "I doubt [the Giants] would enforce it," Weiler explains, because "Bonds is in his last year, and his income potential in terms of the fans he can draw" is of enormous benefit to the Giants. At least until he breaks the home run record, at which point it could be bye-bye Barry. No matter what the Giants do, though, Bonds cannot possibly stop the players' association from challenging it, so that part of the contract is surely unenforceable.
As for reports that the baseball commissioner's office rejected the contract because of the indictment provision, they're false. On Tuesday, the office told the Giants that language involving the personal appearances that Bonds would have to make on behalf of the team was inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement. "It was a minor thing," said baseball spokesman Richard Levin. "We told them to delete it or rephrase it." By the end of the day, the AP reported that the Giants had already sent Bonds' agent a revised contract, but that he was not yet ready to sign it.
Asked if the commissioner's office believed the contract's indictment provision would be enforceable, Levin added, "Yes. Definitely."