Thursday, March 30, 2006

Everyone Else Gets a Free Pass

We've all seen the photos of how Barry Bonds' head has grown, how has chest has expanded, and how his biceps are now (each) the size of a small town. Lost in all of that is how he's not alone. In fact, he's far from it.

Some of the guys who have "grown" over the years include the steroid suspects (or the outright guilty). Rafael Palmeiro, for instance:

Before:


After:


How about some other guys? You know - the guys who (at least as far as we're always told by the media) are clean/steroid-free... I'm not saying that these guys are steroid users (or that they ever were). All I'm saying is that some of them have undergone some pretty amazing physical transformations over the years.

Jeff Bagwell
As a youngster:

More recently:

Frank Thomas

Rookie card:

As a grown man:

The Thomas rookie card shocks me. I've always thought of Frank as a big guy, but if you took his name off of that rookie card, I wouldn't ever guess that it was him.

Alex Rodriguez

Rookie card:

More recently:

Yeah, they're just pictures. And yeah, there's all kinds of "evidence" against Bonds. Mostly we just don't know details about guys who weren't working with BALCO because their suppliers weren't busted. That doesn't mean that no one else is/was using steroids.

But we seem to be doing a good job of separating the users from the non-users by just looking at people. So if we're convicting guys based on pictures and hat sizes, let's make sure that we get them all.

4 comments:

Mike said...

Help for the color blind... are ARod's lips really blue?

Mike said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Mike said...

Also, when can we expect a trip recap? I'm assuming you're back. Are you back? How was it? Did you say "hi" to the pope for me? If you did, I bet he let out a huge sigh and said something about "another one that we've lost" in whatever language he was speaking. Was he wearing his iPod? I hear he's an iPod geek.

Did you see that Carolina's writing about the Marlins now (check out THT)?

Mike said...

You skipped out on the Pope?! Like, wow. If the doesn't involve an incredibly hot girl who you hope you get to marry, I'm not sure that I want to hear it.