Sunday, December 5, 2010

Barry Bonds, baseball's home run king*

Barry Bonds is baseball's home run king. But there is an asterisk that comes with that title. That is because of his alleged use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. In 2005, Bonds was indicted on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice in relation to the government investigation of BALCO, a co-operative that was charged with providing athletes with anabolic steroids and other banned drugs. Bonds' trainer at the time, Greg Anderson, was the BALCO employee charged with supplying athletes with these drugs. Bonds received two substances from Anderson, which he was told were nutritional substances, but were actually an anabolic steroid and a cream used in conjunction with anabolic steroids ("the cream" and "the clear"). The book Game Of Shadows alleges that Bonds used stanozolol and other steroids.
Between his early years in baseball and his final years playing the game, Bonds' physique changed dramatically. He got noticeably larger and gained a lot of weight. His head size also increased dramatically, a known side-effect of anabolic steroids. Bonds attributed these changes in his physique to an intense workout regimen and a healthy diet.
Bonds has the most home runs of all-time with 762 long balls, but we may never know for sure if that number deserves an asterisk next to it in the record books.

1 comment:

  1. Seems like Bonds is done for--no real record, and probably no trip to the Hall of Fame. Sad, in some ways, because he was quite a good player pre-steroids.

    ReplyDelete