This is how it starts, with arthroscopic surgery in October followed by another in January. A clean-out followed by a spruce-up.
No one has ever made money betting the under on Barry Bonds’ susceptibility to the aging process.
His first procedure, a dust-and-vacuum of his left knee, came shortly after the end of the 2004 season. A lot of players make end-of-season fix-its part of their standard October itinerary.
That Bonds had to double back last week and have his right knee serviced is an ominous development. It means he wasn’t having big problems at the end of last season but started experiencing them as his workouts intensified in preparation for next season.
Bonds wasn’t expecting this, the same way Mark McGwire wasn’t expecting the lingering knee problems that curtailed his 2000 season and turned his 2001 season into a nightmarish swan song.
In his final four seasons, McGwire went from 70 home runs to 65 to 32 to 29. He batted .305 in limited action in 2000 but tumbled to .187 in 2001. This was not a result of declining skills or diminishing interest. McGwire simply couldn’t put in enough off-the-field work to adequately prepare him.
When he was on the field, he wasn’t at full strength. And he never stayed on the field long enough to get in a groove. He was only six days past his 38th birthday when he retired, unwilling to continue playing at something less than his best.
This is a likely template for the beginning of the end of Bonds’ career. The latest problems with his right knee erupted just three weeks before the beginning of spring training. That’s telling in that, like McGwire, almost everything Bonds does on the field is the result of preparatory work he does in the weight room.
It has not been proven conclusively that Bonds has used steroids, although he was called to testify before the BALCO grand jury 15 months ago. But last December, portions of Bonds’ testimony were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Those transcripts quoted Bonds as admitting to using questionable substances but denying he knew they were steroids.
Bonds’ former Giants teammate, Jeff Brantley, now an ESPN analyst, told the Chronicle he suspected Bonds began using steroids during his rehab from knee surgery after the 1999 season. Bonds, then 35, had averaged 31.8 home runs over 14 seasons to that point in his career. He has averaged 51.6 in the five seasons since.
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If you’re in the Brantley camp, that would lead you to two ways of characterizing Bonds’ current physical state, neither of them particularly encouraging to those in the Bonds camp:
Bonds is reaping the risks of steroid use, which builds super-sized muscles that joints such as knees cannot support.
Bonds is weaning himself off the juice in response to Major League Baseball’s upgraded steroids testing policy.
Even if you’re squarely in the Bonds camp, this is worrisome news. It’s one thing to deal with ailments that you know are there at the end of a grueling season. It’s another to have them popping up as you’re packing for spring training.
This doesn’t mean Bonds is officially on the long, sad road to mortality. But it could mean that his health and well-being are moving up the list of challenges to his pursuit of the home-run record.