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The perjury trial against baseball star Barry Bonds resumed today in San Francisco as cross examination of Bonds' childhood friend and estranged business partner Steve Hoskins continued.

Hoskins has testified that he strongly suspected Bonds was using steroids between 1999 and 2003. Hoskins on Thursday testified that Dr. Arthur Ting told him that a Bonds elbow injury was caused by steroid use.

Hoskins testified that around 1999 and 2000 he told Ting that Bonds was using steroids. Ting advised him to tell Bonds to stop using them, Hoskins testified.

Bonds' attorney, Alan Ruby, alleges that Hoskins was planing to extort money from Bonds by using secretly recorded tapes of the former San Francisco Giants slugger's trainers talking about steroid use. Ruby also alleged that Hoskins stole from Bonds and the government only agreed not to charge Hoskins when he agreed to testify. Hoskins says he made the tapes to show Bonds' father, former baseball great Bobby Bonds, that his son had a drug problem.

Hoskins' memory has been suspect when trying to recall the dates of his falling out with Bonds in 2003. Hoskins' sister, Kathy, has also asserted she saw Bonds use performance-enhancing drugs. But under tough questioning Hoskins did not recall the dates and circumstances of the injections recounted by his sister.

Hoskins has stated several times that he has had no malicious intention toward Bonds, at the time he made the recordings or now. It was always to help his friend.

"I would want to help Barry then and would want to help Barry now," Hoskins said.

Later today, the prosecution plans to examine Kimberly Bell, Bonds' former mistress who claims Bonds told her of his steroid use. She is also expected to tell the court of the physical and mental changes she witnessed in Bonds that prosecutors say were side effects of steroid use.

According to the Associated Press, Bonds, baseball's all-time home runs leader, is being tried in federal court on four counts of lying to a grand jury and one of obstruction for telling a grand jury in 2003 that he never knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs.

Source: Associated Press