After yesterday’s revelation that Giants player Barry Bonds tested positive for amphetamines during the 2006 season and allegedly said the source of the drugs was teammate Mark Sweeney, several pieces of informational debris surfaced today from the roiling, Force 3 media storm over the team:

• According to a SF Chronicle story this morning, the team had not known of Bonds’ positive test.
• Bonds issued a formal apology to Sweeney, saying “he had nothing to do with” Bonds’ positive test. Bonds’ statement included the sentence “I want to express my deepest apologies especially to Mark and his family, as well as my other teammates,” etc. — in other words, Bonds has admitted fingering Sweeney but now regrets doing so, perhaps realizing the only thing worse for his reputation at this point than a positive drug test is the image of him — as many commentators put it on KNBR today — “throwing a teammate under the wheels of the bus.”
• Sweeney himself went on KNBR this evening to address the issue and put it behind him, saying he accepted Bonds’ statement and repeating his agent’s denials that he had ever posessed speed, much less had it in his locker with a big sign saying FREE DRUGS. Sweeney, who seemed understandably eager to talk about anything else, said he would “have a conversation” with Bonds about the matter once spring training started. You can listen to an mp3 clip of Sweeney’s appearance on the KNBR site.

The interesting thing is that it was Sweeney who instigated the “Giants Idol skit during spring training last year, when Bonds memorably appeared in drag. Sweeney is an old veteran, the only kind of player Bonds really gets along with, and if anything is believeable in what Bonds has to say about this whole mess, it is that “Mark Sweeney is… my friend.”

Barry and Mark, BFF.