The Mitchell report on steroids in baseball that came out yesterday brought out some interesting feelings in my office about our national pastime. And, I learned some interesting things that about modern baseball giants.




Barry Bonds' Growth Suspect

Maybe Barry Bonds can argue that weightlifting, not drugs, accounted for his weird, middle-aged home-run barrage and freaky body makeover, as he has maintained.

He can argue (weakly) that squats and power cleans enabled him to hit nearly 300 home runs after his 35th birthday and added 30 pounds to his skinny frame.

He can argue (not convincingly) that bench press and shoulder shrugs enabled him to get so big that he went from a size 42 jersey to a size 52.

But how does he explain this: His head grew from size 7 1/8 to 7 3/4.

Or this: His feet grew from size 10 1/2 to size 13.

His SKULL grew? Wow.

This can't be good.

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. has frozen its Columbia Strategic Cash Portfolio fund, which is marketed to institutional investors and has about $12 billion in assets, financial news network CNBC reported, citing unidentified people in money management.

Bank of America sent a letter saying that the company will no longer take subscriptions or redemptions as a ``direct result'' of the subprime-mortgage credit crisis, CNBC reported, citing the people.

William F. Buckley on National Review, December 1, 2007

My own story is that I am the founder of a doughty magazine which, if space was solicited tomorrow by a tobacco company, would agree to sell the space. We would come up with serious arguments featuring personal independence and pain/pleasure correlations to justify selling the space, but I would need to weep just a little bit on the inside over the simple existence of tobacco.

You Live With It

Persephone descended, Demeter has let fall the first snow on Washington DC today.