August 07, 2007
The Same Arm
Will Carroll interviews Mark Silva, the man who makes Barry Bonds' arm brace. Although you need a subscription to read the article, the audio interview is available at the link.
The most important thing to get from the article is this:
It's the molds that bring forth the most interesting fact regarding Bonds since Game of Shadows was published. Silva states that because of the custom nature of the work, he's been asked to make casts of Bonds each year. In the first couple of years, he went through the entire process, but due to his workload, he started checking Bonds with precision calipers each subsequent year. "If I made the same brace every year for 12 or more years," Silva said, "it was because there was no size change in Barry's arms."
You read that correctly--the man who not only builds Bonds' brace, but who has taken precision measurements of his arm since 1992, has not seen any increase in the size of Bonds' arm. Point blank, Silva said "there's been no significant change in the size of his arms."
This is an on-record source saying Barry Bonds' arm hasn't changed in twelve years. It really goes against what was reported here. Another piece of the puzzle to sort.
Posted by David Pinto at
01:31 PM
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Cheating
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Erm, not really. He's a man with every reason to lie and absolutely no consequences, either legal or professional, for doing otherwise. Honesty in this situation would be positively idiotic.
Given everything our eyes and reams and reams and reams of solid evidence tell us about Bonds, it's easy to dismiss this as a job-saving lie.
Why would he have any more reason to lie than the reporters who wrote that book? Since they make money off the book, wouldn't they have more reason to lie since without their lie, their book doesn't get written and they don't make money? Now I'm not doubting that Bonds took steroids since he had every incentive to and no good reason why not, but I do doubt pretty much everything in "Game Of Shadows," i.e. why would he take a designer "undetectable steroid" when he wasn't getting tested, and his shoe size and hat size growth (just sounds like made up BS).
'his shoe size and hat size growth (just sounds like made up BS)."
Except for all those pesky photographs marking his physical changes...
If you go to my blog (link), I hope I've done my part laying yesterday's armor article to rest.
Here's the thing on the alleged hat and shoe size changes. When I was running track and cross country in college I wore size 11.5 Nike Pegasus. I was also about 160 pounds. Now, 15 years and about 35 pounds later, I wear size 13 in Nikes. Some of that is just from natural growing (I don't really lift weights) and some is changes in the shoe size (Nikes have definitely gotten smaller over the years). The same thing goes for my hat size. I used to wear 7 1/8 and now I wear 7 1/4 even though I probably have less hair than before. How did this happen? According to "Game of Shadows" it's because I've been abusing steroids and HGH over the years. Yet this isn't true. So don't you think it's possible that Bonds has just naturally gotten bigger over the past 20 years?
JEFF B - I don't doubt bonds used steroids, but the idea that we should completely disregard Silva's comments is laughable. By your criteria, we should disregard everybody's comments.
Jesus some of you guys kill me. If we had documented proof that Bonds gave $1 million to some charity, some of you would say he didn't because you hate him. Yeah, right, that sentence is a mess and doesn't make sense. Well...the same can be said for the immediate negative response whenever his name is even mentioned. So, Jeff, do you get this riled up about the Iraq War or your kids' future or "cheating" and "steroids" in any other sport?