Miami Marlins hitting coach Barry Bonds has to know it's coming: the questions about his slimmer physique.
When the Major League Baseball all-time home run king spoke to media over the weekend --- mostly about deserving to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame --- the reason he isn't yet in would come up.
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Federal prosecutors last summer dropped their criminal case against the San Francisco Giants slugger on an obstruction of justice charge. A jury found him guilty of a "meandering answer," according to The Associated Press in connection with allegations of steroids use during his baseball career.
The steroids moniker has hovered over Bonds since he left the Pittsburgh Pirates to play for the Giants and put on a lot of body mass that accompanied a spike in the number of home runs he hit.
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When Bonds addressed the media over the weekend, he looked noticeably trimmer than his playing days.
"Looking considerably slimmer in his new Marlins uniform than he did towards the end of his steroids-tainted career, all-time home run king Barry Bonds talked Saturday about his slim chance of one day making the Baseball Hall of Fame," the New York Daily News reported.
Bonds didn't address his trimmed look, and no one asked during the Miami press conference. But his less-Herculean look is becoming the new elephant in the room.
"Say hello to the steroid-free Barry Bonds. Barry is now the hitting coach for the Marlins and was spotted looking thin. So thin rumor has it dude has to dance around in the shower so water hits him," Terez Owens quipped.
Bonds received 44 percent of the required 75 percent needed in the 2016 voting in January to earn induction into the Hall of Fame, the Daily News reported.
"But as one of the poster boys for baseball's steroids era, the seven-time NL MVP has failed to come close to gaining election in four tries on the ballot for Cooperstown," the Daily News added.
If Bonds can garner enough support to earn entry into the Hall of Fame, he'll become the poster boy for the steroids-connected players to be judged without that stigma hanging over them.
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