Not much of a story because everyone knows why he's not signed. He's a steriod junkie who has bad knees and facing legal problems. That's a worse investment than ENRON.

Excellent review by Loerke below. Its pretty hard, given the circumstances, not to see strong evidence of collusion by the owners here.

Does anyone seriously think that any of about 5 teams in playoff contention couldn't use his bat in the lineup?

I think the real story is they regard him as something of an embarrassment, but lack the courage to deal with it straight up. After all, they turned a blind eye to the problem of performance enhancement for over a decade. Why expect them to find some guts at this late date?

Well, I'm on record as a Barry hater, so I find it rather amusing. Still, the 'roids have come home to roost and his rep seems to be keeping him unsigned. You should have heard the calls that poured in to our local sports radio guys when a rumor circulated that the D'backs were going to sign him. I imagine similar outbursts from fans have happened in other markets and this contributes to how gun shy teams are about signing him.

This story has the potential to become the biggest sports story of 2008: the player who has an argument for being baseball's all-team statistical leader remains without a team as of today, August 4, 2008. If Bonds goes the entire season without a team, this will be the biggest story of the year. The reason isn't Bonds's decline, since the 2007 season still showed that he ranked in the top twenty hitters in the league: playing about 3/4 of the season, he had a .276 batting average, 28 HR, and 66 RBIs, not to mention leading both leagues in walks. The reason isn't some exorbitant salary demand, since it's been made clear that he will work for peanuts, at least relatively speaking. The reason isn't Bonds's legal troubles, since his court dates were pushed back until after the season's end quite a while ago. The real reason seems to be a conspiracy among baseball teams to keep Bonds out of the league. Otherwise some team would surely have picked him up by now, if only to keep another team from snatching him up. Here is the greatest player anyone living today is likely to see on the field going unsigned for most of the season, while human windmills like Adam Dunn and wastes of space like Carlos Gomez retain starting positions in the outfield. A "4" as of today, but a "5" if I'm saying the same thing two months from now.