Game of Shadows' New Afterword: Bonds' "Freakish" Growth

Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams' book "Game of Shadows" is released this week in a new paperback edition, one year after its first release, along with a new afterword from the authors. As Tom Verducci reports, the afterword highlights the fact that Barry Bonds and his team of lawyers have not disputed a single fact in the book.

Bonds' attorney, Michael Rains, has thrown his share of smoke bombs to divert attention from the facts: challenging the authors' right to profit from the book (he summarily dropped the challenge, with virtually no hope of success), and now trying to demand disclosure by the feds of how much money they've spent on investigating Bonds and, ironically enough, asking them to continue spending more money in the case by continuing to pursue the identify of people who might have leaked information, though the chief leaker already has been outed.

You hear all that noise from the Bonds camp and yet most conspicuous is the silence on challenging the facts of the case. Shadows succeeded because it couched nothing and stood unchallenged. My favorite fact: the authors detail in their afterword the freakish growth of Bonds' body parts in his years with the Giants: from size 42 to a size 52 jersey; from size 10 1/2 to size 13 cleats; and from a size 7 1/8 to size 7 1/4 cap, even though he had taken to shaving his head.

"The changes in his foot and head size," they write, "were of special interest: medical experts said overuse of human growth hormone could cause an adult's extremities to begin growing, aping the symptoms of the glandular disorder acromegaly."

Hmm. Since Bonds joined the Giants at the age of 28, his upper torso, feet, and headsize all grew enormous amounts (the latter two of which are highly unnatural by any stretch, pun intended).

I wonder, in order to balance the equation, if anything on Bonds' body might have shrunk?