Posted on 05/28/2006 2:42:41 PM PDT by MikefromOhio
Heads turned. The ball bid the park adieu. With a single, violent swing of his bat, Barry Bonds made baseball history Saturday in Oakland, climbing one home run closer to the immortal Willie Mays. Six hundred sixteen home runs. It's a mind-numbing number, a body of work to rival Tupac's posthumous releases. Congratulations are in order.
Wait. Hold up.
You say Bonds actually has 714 career home runs?
Er, no. Good one. But no. Sure, if you want to get all technical, there's no arguing that Bonds has forcefully redirected 714 pitches into home run territory over his 21 major-league seasons. Yet according to the ziggurat of evidence compiled in the book "Game of Shadows," Bonds also ingested a Mexican farmacia's worth of performance-enhancing drugs during his peak slugging period, making some of those dingers less authentic than country crooner Kenny Rogers' reconstructed face.
Question is, how many? How many of Bonds' home runs are honest? And how many came courtesy of his reported juicing?
Start with a caveat: There's no way to know. At least not for sure. The homers themselves can't be replicated in a lab, let alone studied. The variables involved in each at-bat are too numerous and complex to tease out completely. The specific physical effects of taking bovine bulk builders and female sex hormones -- Bonds reportedly took both; did he end up lactating buttermilk? -- are poorly understood.
Truth be told, we can only manage a crude approximation. An educated guess, but a guess nonetheless.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
That's frikin awesome!!
LOL
Bonds does not impress.
I have never liked Barry, but.... I have always thought the guy had sick talent. He was a lock for the HOF without going on the juice. Now even if Selig doesn't sack up and do something about this crap, Bonds will always be the asterik guy to 90% of baseball fans.
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