“He did his blocks, he ran downfield, he was sharp,” Tice said. Yet he went through the last practice session of his life so well in searing Minnesota heat that his position coach, Mike Tice, dismissed any thought that anyone should have thought Stringer was in distress. This summer he was said to have reported to Vikings camp at 330. Gaining strength allows a Korey Stringer to carry weight he otherwise couldn’t manage. One ventures to answer that question: The effect is to mask a killer. No such slack can be cut for the grown-ups.

Yet they were understandable because players did only what they saw done. As made by bedazzled players so young as to think themselves invincible, these deals with the devil were at best masochistic, at worst self-destructive. In return for those sculpted, defined bodies, the steroids received compensation in the form of sterility liver, kidney and heart disease skeletal disintegration and death at an early age. Steroids created a generation of NFL linemen with bodies remarkable in their lean and powerful lines.

If William Perry, that moving blob of Bear meat, had been “The Refrigerator,” it was right that Newton, the taller of the two men, should be “The Kitchen.” At the 1993 Super Bowl, Newton made everyone laugh by reminding us of what it was, exactly, that made him rich, famous and worthy of quotation: “Fat’s in, steroids are out.” The more the old Cowboy lineman went on about how fat he was, the more we laughed.

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