I was sitting next to the dugout of the Braves at AT&T park the other night, and our group couldn’t help but notice that Julio Franco, who’s closing in on social security eligibility, was carrying a couple of magnums on either arm. We had no idea how he managed to get into the ballpark with San Francisco’s gun ban policy, but alas there they were:

At 49 years old the guy was still looking like Mr. Universe out there.

It got me thinking then, how did Julio and all the other gun blazing owners in the league compare from today to their early years in the majors.

A quick search results in this image of a younger Julio, some 25 years ago when he made his major league debut.

He was listed at 6′0 tall and 165 lb then, but then puberty must’ve hit and he’s ballooned up to a listed 210 lb according to ESPN (which still seems to be a pretty conservative listing really).

We all know about Marky Mark and his then record brekaing 70-hr season, and how he also started as a starving anorexic, but after getting his membership at Curves he was able to turn himself from this:

to this:

Now there’s no way one can talk about Mark and not mention his Congress buddy, Sammy. Growing up in the Dominican Republic Sammy probably didn’t have much access to proper nutritional foods, and other essential “vitamins”, and transformed from a darker version of the kid from Napoleon Dynamite:

To carrying a few dynamites of his own:

Lesser known among the whole “biggening” era is that the Big Hurt himself used to be known as the Little Hurt. Here he is as we know him today:

And here he is back when protein shakes were only something you heard about in porno movies:

Of course this list would be incomplete without the man making all the headlines today, Mr. Potato Head himself..today:

As a rookie:

Finally, if there’s any sort of suspicion of any sort of foul play going on in baseball in the past few decades, one need only look at the next two exhibits that tells all:

Case closed.