Barry Bonds is on trial for perjury in one of the biggest sports story of the year (and of the last two years, and of the next three). Bonds played for the Pirates for a while, so unless you really want to read comedy based around “we signed some young prospects, and they’re hitting like .250 in single-A, so we’re just gonna wait and see how that turns out” you’ll have to take this as your Spring Training Dugout.

The truth about Bonds is similar to the truth about Clemens. I think they both knew what they were doing, but are so delusional after decades of being deified and conversely judged that they can’t ever truly or morally understand what they’re doing. I think Barry Bonds is the type of guy who goes to the bathroom, comes out, washes his hands, takes five steps down the hall and starts wondering whether or not he needs to go to the bathroom. He can just also hit 7,000 home runs.

Today’s Dugout follows. Your comments are appreciated, as long as they aren’t in the third person. Brandon Stroud hates comments in the third person.

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Opening statements for the Barry Bonds perjury trial in U.S. District Court are scheduled to be heard today, and I’ll speak for the majority of America when I make an underhanded fist about navel-high and shake it dismissively. The lynchpin in the case for the feds is the testimony of Greg Anderson, who served as Bonds’s personal trainer while he was cracking home runs into McCovey Cove.

Along with the swearing in of the jury and opening statements, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is expected to send the jurors out of the courtroom Tuesday so she can send Bonds’ former personal trainer Greg Anderson to jail.

Illston told Anderson on March 1 that she plans to have him kept in custody for the length of the trial if he follows through as expected on his vow of silence. Anderson’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said he will argue that Anderson can’t be jailed on contempt charges because he already served a little more than a year on similar charges after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Bonds.

–The AP.

The trial is expected to last two to four weeks, and jurors have been ordered explicitly to not discuss the trial on the internet. Hi, jurors! But now I feel like I know how some people felt during the OJ trial, because this seems like a big waste of time, especially since Bonds’s alleged perjury occurred in sealed testimony that never should have been leaked to the public. Hey, the guy hit 73 home runs in a season! I don’t care how shriveled up his balls might be.

Memphis Grizzlies player O.J. Mayo, who you might remember earlier this year as that guy who did not pay what he owe (I f-cking love that video), was suspended yesterday for 10 games when he tested positive for a substance not allowed in the league. This is pretty surprising for a guy who has kept out of controversy for most of his basketball career.

The league announced the suspension Thursday for Mayo’s positive test for dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Mayo’s suspension will start Friday night when the Grizzlies visit Philadelphia, and he will be able to return Feb. 15 also against the 76ers in Memphis.

Mayo said in a statement released by the team that he is extremely disappointed he will miss 10 games as the Grizzlies are making a push for the playoffs. He blamed an over the counter supplement that he didn’t know was banned by the NBA for the positive test.-ajc.com.

If you ask a doctor (or look it up on Wikipedia like I did), you’ll find that DHEA is indeed a steroid, which means that yes, Memphis journalists, you can use all those headlines combining “O.J.” and “juice” that you’ve been saving ever since O.J. Simpson left the sports world. I’m a simple man who enjoys the more refined side of rap, so “O.J. DA JUICEMAN” is perfectly fine with me. And yes, I worked entirely way too hard on that header picture. That was, like, 15 minutes. Do you know how valuable my time is? Don’t answer that.

Here’s a fun clip of Houston Texans Brian Cushing and Antonio Smith getting involved in a scuffle during their game with the Tennessee Titans yesterday. Tennessee, behind the virulent exuberance of 37-year-old Kerry Collins, handed Houston their seventh loss in eight weeks. Eventually one has to fight the fights he can win, I suppose, and there aren’t many of those in the AFC South.

The easy joke here is “Roid Rage,” as Cushing was suspended for the first four games of this season after testing positive for excessive levels of Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). But the fact is that hCG is a hormone that occurs naturally in the female body during pregnancy, while an anabolic steroid is technically synthesized. Now don’t you feel stupid. If Antonio would have just handed his boy some pickles and ice cream, everything would have been fine. Vid via TBL.

Brent Musburger, in my opinion, is at a point in his career where he probably has more latitude to express his candor on certain things that the rest of the traditional sports media may not.

“I’ve had somebody say that, you know, steroids should be banned because they’re not healthy for you,” he told the students Tuesday. “Let’s go find out. What do the doctors actually think about anabolic steroids and the use by athletes? Don’t have a preconceived notion that this is right or this is wrong.”

Musburger said negative stories about steroids are mainly the fault of “journalism youngsters out there covering sports (who) got too deeply involved in something they didn’t know too much about.” –The AP.

PREACH. ON. Look, I’m not saying steroids are great, or even ethical, but the stigma that steroids have in the sporting world and in the media today is just insane. Steroids have been used as a conduit, in my opinion, for certain sportswriters to carry out whatever agendae they choose against whomever they choose. Barry Bonds. Brian Cushing. Marion Jones. Whoever. I don’t really care about steroids in big sports, just as long as somebody finally nails Lance Armstrong. The only thing worse than hearing about steroids is hearing about cycling…

In between playing for the United Baseball League’s Laredo Broncos and practicing mixed martial arts, former steroid user and current Major League Baseball pariah Jose Canseco has a Twitter account. I’m not going to mince words here – Jose’s Twitter is awesome. Most recently, the former Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays, New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox – in no specific order – player claimed that the show Eastbound and Down is based on his life. Because we famously remember Canseco as a foul-mouthed redneck relief pitcher.

But despite the glaring inaccuracy of his claim, Canseco believes that the show should bring him on as a consultant. And that makes sense because Canseco is f*cking broke and is desperate for anything. According to the history of his Tweets, he’s not making any money by playing in the UBL and he’s been evicted and is living in someone’s garage. Aside from that, though, Canseco is staying positive because he’s achieving his dream of still hitting home runs in a softball league at the age of 46, and he’s putting haters in their places, despite MLB’s conspiracy to keep him down.

Samples of his awesomeness after the jump.

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