Yesterday, a federal jury convicted former baseball star Barry Bonds of obstructing justice. Prosecutors accused Bonds of being overly evasive regarding whether he had been injected with anything by anyone other than a doctor. According to prosecutors, Bonds evasiveness hindered the grand jury’s 2003 sport’s investigation of BALCO, which is accused of supplying steroids to major league ballplayers. The jury nearly convicted Bonds on one of three perjury counts of lying about whether he had been injected by his former personal trainer, but deadlocked 11-1. Bonds also was accused of lying about using steroids and a human growth hormone.

Prosecutors are deciding whether to retry Bonds on the three deadlocked counts of perjury. Whether or not Major League Baseball’s all-time home runs leader faces jail time or a second trial is open to conjecture. But what isn’t open to conjecture is his use of human growth hormone.

I’ve lifted weights ever since I was a kid, first, to build muscle mass for sports, and second, just to stay in condition. I can tell you that no matter how many weights you lift or how many times you lift, your head size and foot size won’t increase. But human growth hormone can increase both head and foot size. The hormone, which is produced by the pituitary gland, normally stimulates bone and tissue growth throughout the body. However, if there’s too much of it, the body starts to develop an abnormal amount of flesh and bone. In an adult, very large doses of HGH can cause the skull to thicken and the forehead and eyebrow ridge to become especially prominent. Hands and feet also grow out of proportion with the rest of the body. When this glandular disorder occurs, it’s called acromegaly.

In their 2007 book “Game of Shadows,” authors Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada write about Bonds’ massive growth since he joined the San Francisco Giants prior to the 1993 season. Over the course of 14 seasons, Bonds’ jersey size increased from (42 to 52), cleat size (10 1/2 to 13), cap size (7 1/8 to 7 1/4), and shoe size (10½ to 13).

Those incredible––and abnormal––increases in size lead inevitably to the conclusion that Bonds used a growth hormone to enhance his performance. Thus, should his 762 home runs, and his 2001 single-season major league record for home runs of 73, be permanently expunged from the record books?

I, for one, certainly think so.