A 44 yr old (45 after the ASB) who is coming off a year of inactivity AND hip surgery, not to mention facing a federal trial.

Yup, that’s attractive.

rests on 3 fallacious premises. All the rest, about the barcolounger and his nasty attitude are just noise and have no relevance to any argument about his prowess as a player. So even assuming he was guilty of using them (still not proven), and ignoring that in his last years he was a great player and was tested regularly with only negative results. What are the arguments?

1. Steroids were illegal and therefore he was unethical in that he was breaking the law.
  This is the weakest argument as far as his baseball performance is concerned, but has some merit in arguments about whether he should be allowed to continue in the game. The problem with it is its lack of a sense of proportion. Let’s agree that there is a serious ethical question when anyone breaks the law. But all laws are not of equal significance. Baseball gladly welcomes wife beaters, drunk drivers and diverse other lawbreakers, crimes far more serious than steroid use. I bet many of us know people who break the speed limit or smoke pot, but who we still associate with and even admire for other traits. At most, regardless of what penalties the law allows, drug use is a misdemeanor, although I would argue it is not even that since in my view it is fundamentally a health issue not a moral lapse. Only those trying to bolster an otherwise unsupportable argument against Bonds can use this kind of legal issue to provide a facade of moral concern.

2. Steroid use was banned by baseball and thus using it demands punishment.
  This is one of the more hypocritical assertions of the anti-Bonds faction. First, there is no rule if there is no enforcement and particularly if there is not even any means of enforcement were the will there. The entire argument is based on an obscure commissioner pronouncement that was neither heeded nor given any teeth. During the entire period, there was no testing, no penalties for anyone and little concern over the issue. On the contrary, the baseball establishment not only actively opposed any investigation of charges that steroids were routinely used but encouraged their use in diverse ways.
  Even more hypocritical is the barrage of references to sacred records that were set by players known to have used all sorts of illegal performance enhancers including amphetamines without which it is unlikely that they could have performed as well as they did. This may be the most infuriating hypocrisy of all, that Mays, Aaron, Koufax and most players of the 1960s get a pass when they were as routinely using drugs just as the steroid users are accused of doing.

3. Steroids give players an unfair advantage so that their performances are suspect.
  If the first two arguments lack merit, this one becomes meaningless also. Even without that however, while there may have been some advantage gained (as there has been from legal supplements, improved equipment and training facilities, better medical care such as Tommy John surgery, increased use of eyeglasses and many other improvements that provide advantages lacking to earlier generations), abundant research has failed to demonstrate either what it is in relation to the particular skills needed for baseball or to what extent it provides real advantage. Nor does a review of the many players, both hitters and pitchers, who have been implicated in steroid use provide any evidence that there was a real advantage or that there were not other factors (juiced balls? juiced bats?) that were not more important. Simply repeating the claims of improved muscle mass or any other physical effects has little bearing on whether it actually helped hitters do better, especially as they often were up against pitchers also juiced.

I know this thread is focused on whether Bonds is a good alternative for DH in TB, not about the larger issues, but I think once we dispose of the irrational anti-Bonds hysteria it becomes clearer whether other factors (age, injury, performance projections) make a positive or negative case without the irrelevant noise surrounding him.

If they did not last year, I cannot imagine them doing it now when there are more reasons to avoid him. But I also think that if he were signed and if the team did well with him, all the other issues, while real enough, would become merely tangents and not terribly important to any but a few diehard prigs.