Bonds is a Cheat - Is There Any Doubt?

Jeff Pearlman has a new biography coming out on Barry Bonds called Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. ESPN has an excerpt from the book on their site.

Most have focused on the dinner at Ken Griffey Jr's house where Bonds announced that he was going "hard-core" on steroids to compete with Sosa and McGwire. What really got my attention was this bit (emphasis added):

Within the Giants' clubhouse, Bonds' transformation was met with skepticism. His face was bloated. His forehead and jaw were substantially larger. "And the zits," says Jay Canizaro, who played 55 games as a Giants infielder in 1996 and '99. "Hell, he took off his shirt the first day and his back just looked like a mountain of acne. Anybody who had any kind of intelligence or street smarts about them knew Barry was using some serious stuff."

Teammates recognized what was going on right away but we never heard anything from sportwriters who were covering baseball at the time. I agree with Jay Canizaro that they either were plain stupid or street stupid not to notice or else they just turned a blind eye - maybe they didn't want to be impolite. I'm starting to think they were stupid.

You can pre-order Pearlman's book below (and please note that Game of Shadows has been added to the book advertisements at the top of the blog).