Oh, give me just a tiny friggin' break.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Barry Bonds used to commit any spare time before games to lifting weights, working meticulously to build up his leg strength for long nights of standing in left field and on the basepaths following his many walks.

His bum right knee no longer allows it. He is carrying a few extra pounds around his middle and vows to spend the offseason bringing his playing weight down from more than 228 pounds to about 200.

"I'm going to be skinny," said Bonds, who weighed 185 pounds as a rookie in 1986 but has not been near 200 for many years.

Bonds still defends his powerful swing against anybody else's in the game, though he acknowledges he no longer might be able to hit homers at the same rate he has in recent years.

Shortstop Omar Vizquel is eager to see how fans react to his teammate on the road, where Bonds can expect plenty of chatter about steroids.

Though Bonds never has tested positive for performance-enhancing substances and repeatedly has denied using steroids, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Bonds testified to a federal grand jury in December 2003 that he used substances prosecutors claim were performance-enhancing drugs.

Translation: I have stopped taking steroids now so that I will not test positive. Hence, you should all be prepared to see what the natural evolution of my body would have looked like, in which it would have been normal for an adult man to gain 15 or so pounds as he entered middle age. Also, without the 'roids, I will still hit home runs, but not at the obscene rate I have in the past.