Gathering Speed

With the All-Star game coming up next week in San Francisco, every ounce of the media’s attention is focused on the biggest attraction that ballpark has to offer: larger than life world-class asshole Barry Bonds, who stands within five swings of the bat from eclipsing the most legendary record in American sports. Oh yeah, there’s a really good chance he cheated to do it.

While Bonds is the poster child for the dark age known as the Steroid Era in Major League Baseball, it’s important to remember that he’s never actually been convicted of anything. Jason Grimsley, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire have all been caught or have given explanations so weak they might as well have been written with a syringe. Every power hitter during this troubling time is under suspicion forever, but the pitchers get off scott free.

Roger Clemens was done in 1996. The Red Sox aren’t idiots, and they didn’t think he had anything left. Then all of a sudden, he gets on the bad side of 35 and becomes the most dominant pitcher of his era, winning his 350th game this week. No one blinks. What sort of hypocrisy is this, especially since Clemens has the one trait shared by Bonds and the aforementioned cheaters:

He has a huge fucking head.

Look at him in his pics from Texas and his early days at Fenway. He was totally ridiculous on the mound, but he also looked like a regular guy. Suddenly, he’s in pinstripes in the Bronx and…well let’s put it this way: Steven Segal could fit his entire head inside Clemens’ head. He could probably get all the way inside and practice Tai Chi, and it would be spacious.

Case in point, I sat on the first base side when Brady Anderson put on 50 pounds of muscle in two months. Huge head. But we were drinking the Golden Age of Baseball Kool-Aid back then, and we continued to buy in until the Jonestown that was the senate hearings. That’s what steroids do; as huge as you get, your head grows more than anything. Kirstie Alley gained 30 stone 7 over the course of an afternoon, but her head looks the same (she also has a pedestrian 40 time). The only thing that adds significantly to your head comes from Balco.

So when in doubt, the gigantic head is the red flag. That’s why when we look back at the late nineties, we need to remember the great players, not just the HGH monsters that are the current standard bearers. Greg Maddux? Genius pitcher; tiny head. Ken Griffey, Jr? Amazing swing; same hat he wore in 1992. Curt Schilling? Compare his rookie year in Baltimore with the bloody sock game, paying close attention to the gravitational pull of that sandbag on top of his shoulders…that’s all I’m saying…