I agree that the upper range of hundreds of millions is based on the assumption that the players would elect to re-open the CBA. However, even if they elect not to, I'm sure that they could extract some decent concessions from the owners in return for not re-opening it - things like changes in minimum salaries, per diems, free agency and arbitration dates, free agent compensation, revenue splits from playoff games, or luxury taxes and revenue sharing. There are tons of ways for the players to cost the owners money without actually going through the full renegotiation process.

I'll just pop in to say that I'll see what the evidence is, but I still don't get how the owners (as a group) benefit from Barry Bonds being out of uniform. That's not to say that there is no collusion, but it just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I could see how earlier collusion, which was directly about controlling payroll, worked in the owners' favor. If it's okay for Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada to still be playing baseball, how does Bonds hurt the owners' bottom line (which, after all, is all the owners really care about)?

I understood how signing Bonds would be a risky move all the way around for an individual team, but I don't see how collusion benefits anyone, which is why I doubted that there was collusion.

Once again, that's exactly backwards: it's not a risky move for an individual team, but it is risky for baseball collectively. It's not a risky move for an individual team because, along with whatever bad p.r. Bonds brings, that team gets Bonds' production, which more than makes up for it. But collectively, an individual player's production is a wash -- the gain for one team is loss for that team's opponents -- and all that's left is the bad p.r.

None of Sheffield, Giambi, or Tejada are the face of steroids for MLB; Clemens might also be, but you may have noticed that he isn't still playing baseball.

(When I say "bad p.r.," I'm referring less to fans than to Congress, btw.)

(2) and (4): Also, this is civil and not criminal, so the standard would be "preponderance of the evidence", not "beyond a reasonable doubt".

There doesn't need to be a paper trail. A preponderance of the evidence can be established by patterns. The SEC does it all the time.

I'll just pop in to say that I'll see what the evidence is, but I still don't get how the owners (as a group) benefit from Barry Bonds being out of uniform.

Well, appropos to political season, I am reminded of what George Brown, a big Texas contractor who was in cahoots with LBJ for decades, said: people underestimate the human factors in these things. What I always flash on during Bonds/Selig/collusion threads is Selig's facial expression in the press box when he was following Bonds at 754. It really could not have been more obvious what he thought about it and about Bonds. I don't think he is entirely rational about the issue (how many baseball fans are even-handed when it comes to Bonds?). Also, Selig is a Milwaukeean and is about the same age as Henry Aaron. Finally, when powerful people do "stupid" stuff, it is often just arrogance. Bud is riding high--the Yankees are down, revenues are way up, the wild-card is a smash hit--why not go for it WRT getting Bonds? People hate the SOB, right? The big problem with my legacy is steroids, and Bonds is the face of that problem, right?

I have been very skeptical about provable collusion and I still am. But it would not totally surprise me.