Here's a tale of steroid use that might -- as it's designed to do -- give pause to anyone considering the juice.
Their sex life really slumped, however, when Bonds started taking steroids, driven by jealousy after Mark McGwire began receiving piles of press for his pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home run record. ...
Bonds was always moody - "I always figured he had PMS, like a woman," Bell said – but the drugs radically changed his behavior as well as his body. He became a different person, controlling, threatening and finally violent. ...
His body had grown thicker, his back was pocked with acne, his hair had fallen out and his testicles had shriveled when Bonds asked his former mistress if she thought anyone would suspect he was on the juice.
In case you don't follow these things, Barry Bonds is the controversial slugger most recently of the San Francisco Giants. (For those who really don't follow these things that's a baseball team.) He was in the sports-page/sports-talk news a lot this past summer because he broke a cherished record in a game for which fans, writers, and commentators cherish its many records even more than most other sports. This year, Bonds finally surpassed the number of home runs hit by Hank Aaron who had, in 1974, surpassed the home-run record set by the most cherished of all baseball legends, Babe Ruth. (And, for those who really, really don't follow these things: Ruth was a big, fat, drunken ol' baseball player for teams in Boston and New York. Long story short: He broke the hearts of generations of baseball fans in Boston and "built" the cherished home of baseball in the Bronx without ever touching a timber, i-beam, or paint brush. While doing all that, he also hit more balls out of the park than anyone else in the early "modern" history of the game.)
That should have been a cause for celebration among baseball fans, but it wasn't because the tales of Bonds' steroid use had long ago eclipsed most stories about his considerable athletic accomplishments. Example: The fashion designer [married to a woman, in case you were wondering] who bought the ball the Bonds hit to set the new record asked fans what he should do with it. They voted to have him send it to baseball's cherished museum to cherished records and cherished heros of the game, but branded with a big asterisk. That symbol (now cherished by some baseball fans who so often fall into these cherishing moods) is meant to indicate that Bonds's new record didn't really surpass Aaron's record because he -- like all-too-many others of his generation -- was using "performance enhancing drugs".
On newspaper sports pages and in sports-talk radio air time, contributors are always on the lookout for a good morality tale. Bonds offered them their hook of the summer. And now his ex-girlfriend adds details to the story. And, of course, it helps that those taking in the tale get it along with reportedly "tasteful" and no doubt cherished cheesecake.