Well, if authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams are to be believed.
Sports Illustrated is reporting that the men’s upcoming book, “Game of Shadows,” goes into painstaking detail of Bonds’ intricate, and lengthy, use of steroids. Bonds, they claim, began using them in 1998 – not coincidentally, the year that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were co-MVP’s and SI’s Men of the Year thanks to their home run onslaught – and took every type of steroid you can imagine. Pills, drops, cream, injections, you name it. He was even taking insulin. And they claimed that he screamed for his juice like a junkie jonesing for a fix.
The authors write that [Greg] Anderson started Bonds on Winstrol, also known as stanozolol, the longtime favorite steroid of bodybuilders, disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson and baseball player Rafael Palmeiro. In 100 days, Bonds packed on 15 pounds of muscle, and at age 35 hit home runs at the best rate of his career, once every 10.4 at bats. But he also grew too big, too fast. He tore his triceps tendon, telling [mistress Kimberly] Bell that the steroids “makes me grow faster, but if you’re not careful, you can blow it out.”
The book said Anderson and Bonds subsequently tweaked the program, adding such drugs as the steroid Deca-Durabolin and growth hormone, which allowed Bonds to retain his energy and physique without rigorous training. Not only did the growth hormone keep him fresh, but after complaining in 1999 about difficulty tracking pitches, he noticed it improved his eyesight as well.
Bonds added more drugs after the 2000 season, when Anderson hooked up Bonds with BALCO and its founder, [Stan] Conte, according to the authors. In addition to the Cream and the Clear, the steroids designed to be undetectable, Bonds took such drugs as Clomid, a women’s infertility drug thought to help a steroid user recover his natural testosterone production, and Modafinil, a narcolepsy drug used as a powerful stimulant.
Whereas Anderson’s drug acumen had been forged in the gym culture, Conte and his chemists brought Bonds to another level of sophistication, by prescribing him elaborate cocktails of drugs designed to be even more effective and undetectable. For instance, the authors write that in 2002, when Bonds won his fifth MVP Award and had a .700 on-base percentage in the World Series, he was fueled by meticulous three-week cycles in which he injected growth hormone every other day, took the Cream and the Clear in the days in between, and capped the cycle with Clomid. The cycle was followed by one week off. The authors write that Anderson usually administered the drugs to Bonds at Bonds’ home, using a needle to inject the growth hormone and a syringe without a needle to squirt the Clear under his tongue.
It was bad enough that no one believed Bonds when he claimed that he unknowingly took the cream and the clear after the BALCO investigation report leaked. But he’s toast now. Even if the whole thing is bunk – and given the detail of Bonds’ alleged regimen, this can’t all be bunk – everyone knows that the words of the accuser are always more powerful than the denial of the person accused. Bonds, of course, is going to deny that any of this is true; indeed, he walked away from a bunch of reporters that asked him about it, saying, “I won’t even look at (the book). There’s no need to.” But in his heart of hearts, he has to know that this story is not only going to hound him all year, but for the rest of his life.
