Bell moved to Arizona, and over the years she learned to make accommodations. So, apparently, did Bonds’s wife, Liz, a private, publicity-shy person, who can’t have been under too many illusions about her husband’s frequent absences. Still, she had their baby daughter to care for, as well as joint custody of his other two children.
The Giants were eager to portray their new star as fundamentally changed, more mature than the moody, self-indulgent young player who had alienated Pittsburgh. “I think he has changed, and I think, frankly, that his marriage has a lot to do with it,” Giants owner Peter Magowan told
Oakland Tribune
reporter Josh Suchon. “He’s got a lovely wife and lovely kids. He’s a very good father.”
Kimberly Bell, too, noticed that Bonds had changed, though not in the ways praised by Magowan. Little more than a year after his marriage, Bonds’s physique had been radically transformed. He was no longer the slender athlete she’d met in the Giants’ parking lot. His chest, shoulder, and arm muscles were huge. Even his head seemed swollen. He developed acne on his shoulders and back. He complained that his testicles had shrunk, and his sex drive faltered. He became even more moody and possessive, evident from the phone messages Bell recorded. Bell recalled standing with him in front of a mirror as the changes became increasingly visible. “Do I look bloated?” he asked, according to Bell. “Does it look funny? Do you think this is obvious?”
B
arry Bonds started working out with Greg Anderson in 1998, the same year he married Liz. Anderson was a personal trainer at the World Gym near San Francisco International Airport, a spartan, cavernous facility that attracted hard-core weight lifters. Anderson was five-foot-ten and 225 pounds, muscular, with tattoos covering his arms and long sideburns, a hyper-masculine look favored by many weight lifters and bodybuilders. He and Bonds had grown up together in San Carlos, and according to Bonds, they “ran into each other” toward the end of the season and started talking about weight training.
That summer the nation was riveted by the rivalry between two power hitters, Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals, as each pursued the single-season home run record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. Suspense built as the lead changed back and forth throughout the summer. Finally McGwire hit the record-breaking home run on September 8, and went on to finish the season with a new record of 70 homers, 4 ahead of Sosa.
Amid the national adulation, the
New York Times
wrote an editorial noting that “a dismaying little chill” had accompanied the admission by McGwire that he had been using a substance called androstenedione, or “andro,” as it was known to bodybuilders and other users. Though not prohibited by professional baseball, the substance–which was said to enhance testosterone production and thereby boost muscle size and strength–had been banned by both the NFL and the International Olympic Committee. Though stopping short of calling McGwire’s record tainted, the
Times
called his use of the substance a cause for “grave concern,” in large part because McGwire was a hero and role model to so many young athletes. McGwire pledged to stop using it.
As McGwire and Sosa made national headlines, Bonds seethed with jealousy, according to Bell and others, belittling the two players as “sluggers” with few other skills. When McGwire played in San Francisco, crowds gathered to watch him warm up. They grew so large that ropes had to be installed to keep them back. Bonds flew into a rage over the ropes, knocked them down, and ordered them removed, saying “not in my house.”
Bonds was in danger of being eclipsed, and in an effort to keep up with the staggering pace being set by Sosa and McGwire, he’d already started more serious strength training. When it came to home runs, keen hand-eye perception and coordination were essential but not enough. Blasting a ball 435 feet took sheer muscular strength.
Like Bonds, Anderson had wanted to play baseball, and what he lacked in natural ability, he figured he’d make up for with strength. He lifted weights, first at a community college in the Bay Area, and then at Fort Hays State in Kansas, where he was recruited to play baseball. As with many bodybuilders, lifting weights seemed to become something of an addiction, the constant pursuit of “getting big,” as much for its own sake as for enhancing his baseball prowess. He spent countless hours in the weight room, adding twenty pounds of muscle in his first year. He started using steroids, which weren’t yet illegal and were widely available at gyms for serious bodybuilders.
Anderson had hopes he might be drafted by a professional baseball team, but when nothing materialized after his junior year, he left without graduating and returned to California. He naturally gravitated toward other weight lifters and bodybuilders, and after one of his friends bought the World Gym franchise, Anderson found his perfect milieu. He started a personal training business, Get Big Productions. His license plates read “W8 GURU.” He used and dealt in steroids, refining his knowledge of their benefits and risks, even though they had been outlawed by Congress as potentially dangerous controlled substances in 1990. Penalties for illegal use and distribution were increased, and distribution of steroids and human growth hormone, other than for legitimate medical reasons at the direction of a physician, was made a felony. With the AIDS epidemic in full swing, and steroids a common prescription for the wasting disease often associated with the virus, there was an ample supply in the Bay Area.
Steroids are all synthesized or naturally occurring forms of the male sex hormone testosterone, which promotes muscle growth and inhibits pain associated with the body’s breakdown of protein, permitting more frequent and strenuous exercise. But frequent use, especially at the high doses embraced by many athletes, has numerous adverse side effects, some largely cosmetic, others serious. Steroids have been linked to psychiatric disorders, depression, and suicide; to heart and liver damage; and to sexual dysfunction. Steroid use can cause severe acne, especially on the back and shoulders, hair loss, mood swings, and fatigue, and it can be addictive. Human growth hormone, a synthetic or natural protein, encourages healing and tissue growth, and is often used in conjunction with a steroid regimen. It, too, has been associated with numerous adverse side effects.
When Bonds reconnected with Anderson in 1998, he felt he needed to “push [my] body to a new level,” as he put it, “and I liked Greg’s philosophy. Because my other trainer was, like, three sets of legs, three sets of this . . . And Greg is more, sixteen sets of chest, more biceps, to really maximize and expand your muscle. And I liked that philosophy. And I admired that.”
Anderson became Bonds’s strength trainer, working out regularly at the World Gym; Bonds had separate trainers for running and stretching. Anderson was suddenly vaulted to a new level, from obscurity to training one of the nation’s premier athletes. Anderson had never realized much financial success, living a hand-to-mouth existence and moving through a progression of small rental apartments. He had no formal agreement with Bonds, and probably would have provided his training for free, just for the thrill of working with Bonds and for the prestige. Still, Bonds gave him periodic payments, typically in envelopes containing $10,000 in cash. Bonds sold Anderson a barely used SUV that Bonds had tired of in a matter of days.
Anderson also got to travel with Bonds, joining him at spring training in Arizona (where he shared the house in Scottsdale with Bell) and on an All-Star trip to Japan. As part of Bonds’s entourage. Anderson moved freely throughout the stadium and locker rooms, and got to know other professional players, even though Bonds seemed jealous and resentful of any attention he showed other players. Still, Bonds introduced Anderson to other professional players who were his friends, like Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi of the Yankees, whom he met on the Japan trip. Bonds invited Sheffield to stay with him after the end of the 2001 season and said he’d help him with his workout regimen. Bonds introduced him to Anderson, and Sheffield ended up paying him $10,000. Giambi, too, become an Anderson client at Bonds’s behest.
As Kimberly Bell had already observed, Bonds’s physical transformation in 1999, the year after he started training with Anderson, was little short of amazing. He went from 185 to 230 pounds even as his body fat dropped. He looked like an NFL linebacker, not the trim young Pirate of just a few years earlier. His teammates started calling him “the Incredible Hulk.”
But perhaps he had bulked up too fast, and the Anderson training regimen had been too intense. He tore an elbow tendon lifting heavy weights and was disabled for weeks. Then he pulled a groin muscle. He played in only 102 games in 1999.
None of this was lost on the Giants management. The next year, as the Giants moved into their new, state-of-the-art Pac Bell Park, they hired Stan Conte as head athletic trainer. Bonds quickly made it clear to Conte that he might be head trainer, but he wouldn’t be training Bonds. He needed “special attention” from his own trainers. Bonds had his own area in the new clubhouse, separated from other Giants players by a wall of lockers, with a large-screen TV and vibrating lounge chair. His teammates nicknamed Bonds’s private space “the kingdom.”
Conte was immediately suspicious of Anderson, whose own physique and demeanor were practically a billboard for illegal steroid use. Conte asked Anderson for his résumé. Other than a high school diploma, it showed no training or other education that might qualify Anderson as a personal trainer, let alone as a strength trainer for someone of Bonds’s stature. During spring training, Conte worried that Bonds was lifting excessive weights and risking further injury, but Anderson told him, “I’m doing what Barry tells me to.” Conte tried to have Anderson banned from the Giants’ clubhouse, to no avail.
Under Anderson’s direction, Bonds adjusted to his new training regimen and physical condition. Despite Conte’s worries, Bonds not only avoided injury, but at age thirty-five, when most players undergo an inevitable physical decline, he demonstrated increased strength and stamina. In 2000, he hit 49 home runs; in 2001 he nailed his career 500th. After a streak of home runs in Atlanta, a local reporter asked him how he could account for such a feat: “Call God. Ask him,” Bonds replied.
As Bonds was closing in on McGwire’s record, reporter David Grann visited him in the Giants’ clubhouse several times for a profile that ran in the
New York Times Magazine
. At one session, Bonds was lounging shirtless in his reclining chair, and Grann admired his bulging biceps and sculpted abdominals. Steve Hoskins and Greg Anderson were standing nearby. “To stay in such condition he eats six specially prepared meals a day, consisting of fish, chicken, turkey, vegetables or, on rare instances, beef; each meal has 350 to 450 calories,” Grann reported. “ ‘Every month we take his blood and test his mineral levels to make sure they’re in line so that if he’s 10 milligrams off in zinc or 6 off in magnesium or 5 milligrams off in copper, that’s what we replace,’ Anderson explained. ‘That’s how he stays in such good condition.’ ”
Bonds was also featured in the June issue of
Muscle & Fitness
in what amounted to an advertorial for BALCO, the acronym for the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, founded by fitness-supplement guru Victor Conte Jr. Bonds told the magazine:
I visit BALCO every three to six months. They check my blood to make sure my levels are where they should be. Maybe I need to eat more broccoli than I normally do. Maybe my zinc and magnesium intakes need to increase. Victor will call me to make sure I’m taking my supplements, and my trainer Greg will sit near my locker and stare at me if I don’t begin working out right away. I have these guys pushing me.
Be that as it may, one of Bonds’s teammates approached head trainer Stan Conte for advice about using steroids, which he was thinking of buying from Anderson, pointing to Bonds’s success. Conte gave him what he called a “good lecture” on the unfairness and risks of steroid use. Though notoriously slow to address the issue, Major League Baseball had explicitly banned the use of steroids and human growth hormone in the 2002 Players Agreement, and random drug testing was scheduled to begin the following year. Though Conte wouldn’t name the player, he also reported the incident to Giants general manager Brian Sabean, who’d done nothing about Conte’s requests to have Anderson barred from the clubhouse. Sabean suggested Conte confront Bonds and Anderson–which Conte knew would be futile and would only turn Bonds against him. Nor did Sabean report the incident (he later said he was unaware of a major-league requirement that such matters be reported to the commissioner’s office). Clearly, no one wanted to raise the delicate matter of Anderson’s suspected use and distribution of steroids and risk Bonds’s ire. Basically, Conte resigned himself to the status quo, which meant that Bonds was exempt from the rules that applied to everyone else. When the Giants’ head of security asked during spring training in 2003 if he could help with the Anderson problem, Conte said, “the horse had already left the barn and there’s no need to close the door now.”
In 2002, the Giants signed Bonds to a five-year, $90 million contract. He was the highest-paid player in baseball history. He paid $8.7 million for a sixbedroom, ten-bathroom mansion in Beverly Park, a gated community in the Hollywood Hills, above Los Angeles. In May, Bonds passed McGwire’s career home run total, then led the Giants to their first National League pennant since 1989. Anderson accompanied him to the World Series games in Anaheim. The Giants seemed well on their way to a world championship title, but Anaheim came from behind in game six and then took the series in game seven. The World Series champion ring Bonds coveted had eluded him.