Plain talk from Barry
Barry Bonds still believes baseball has far more important issues to discuss than steroid use, but since you asked…
In an informal conversation with reporters from the Oakland Tribune and ESPN in the Giants’ spring training locker room Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bonds repeated his position on performance- enhancing substances: They’re not a big deal.
“You’re talking about something that wasn’t even illegal at the time,” Bonds said. “All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever. Man, it’s not like this is the Olympics.”
Bonds didn’t say he had used steroids — and he also said his head hasn’t grown and his testicles haven’t shrunk in recent years. Certain hormones can cause head growth, while shrunken testicles can be a side effect of anabolic steroids.
“What’s all this about my head size?” Bonds asked. “My hat size is the same today as when I started. My head hasn’t grown. I’ve always been a 71/4 to a 7 3/8 my whole career. You can go check.
“I can tell you my testicles are the same size,” he added later. “They haven’t shrunk. They’re the same and work just the same as they always have.”
See you at the X-Games
Unlike most ski-jumpers, entrants in a Norwegian competition Saturday lost points for any smooth and graceful landings on the snow.
These jumpers were aiming for the trees. The higher they landed, the better their scores were.
The unofficial Norwegian Tree-Ski-Jumping Championships were organized for the second time by a group of mountaineering enthusiasts.
“It isn’t really all that dangerous,” said Oeystein Lia, one of the organizers. “It usually goes pretty well.”
Most end up with at least a few bumps, scratches and bruises.
The idea is to take flight from a mound of snow, fly through the air and land in a tree. To qualify as a completed jump, the skier has to hang onto the tree without falling to the ground.
Eldar Heide, last year’s champion, came away with the gold with a jump that included a graceful landing about 6 1/2 feet up the trunk of a small birch.
It was a bad rap
Forty-three years ago, on March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scored 100 points against the New York Knicks at Hershey, Pa.
Darrall Imhoff, the former University of California star who spent four seasons with the Lakers in the mid-1960s, was the Knicks’ center assigned to guarding Chamberlain that night.
According to a new book, “Wilt, 1962” by Gary Pomerantz, Imhoff years later was introduced at a golf function by former Lakers teammate “Hot Rod” Hundley as “the man who held Wilt to 100 points.”
Countered Imhoff: “That’s a bad rap. I didn’t play the whole game. Wilt only got 85 off me.”
The last word
Jay Leno, noting the cancellation of the NHL season on “The Tonight Show,” said: “If you want to see people on TV with bad teeth, you’ll just have to wait for the Prince Charles wedding.”