The facts and whispers on PEDs

Hall of Fame ballot: The facts and whispers on PEDs
Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2012/11/28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-roger-clemens-barry-bonds/1731833/

Baseball's Hall of Fame released its 2013 ballot Wednesday
Several players directly or indirectly tied to steroid use appear for the first time
Players have 15 years to earn election to the Hall

November 28. 2012 - It will be known, immediately and for the foreseeable future, as the Baseball Hall of Fame's Doping Class.

Wednesday, the Hall released its 2013 ballot that will be sent to 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who must decide how best to handle a long list of players tied directly, indirectly or circumstantially to performance-enhancing drugs.

Indeed, the debate will not die once balloting results are released Jan. 9.

And the support each player receives likely won't remain static, either. A player must be named on 75% of ballots to earn induction to the Hall, but just 5% to remain on the ballot, for up to 15 years. Over that course of time, the voting pool will change, as could the attitude of the electorate. New information may emerge about candidates that could steer voters in a new direction.

But what do we know now, about both the ballot newcomers and the holdovers?

It's up to each voter to decide whether to ignore the cloud of PED use, or punish a candidate for his doping, suspected or otherwise. We're not here today to cast judgment on the proper route.

Rather, here's a user's guide to the users, suspected and otherwise, that voters will be basing their ballots upon.

Keep it close at hand. Some debates may not go away for the next 15 years.

No-doubters

Rafael Palmeiro: Tested positive for Stanolozol in 2005, the first whale nailed by baseball's drug-testing program. His 3,020 career hits and 569 home runs would make him a Hall lock; instead, his positive test -- and sanctimonious denials of PED use in a 2005 congressional hearing -- reduced him to vote totals of 11% and 12.6% his first two years on the ballot.

Mark McGwire: His nebulous testimony about steroid use in the same hearing that set Palmeiro up for his fall from grace all but discounted his 583 career home runs. McGwire peaked at 23.7% of the vote in 2010. Coming clean did not help his cause, either. After admitting in January 2010 he took steroids and growth hormone in his career, McGwire's total dipped to 19% each of the next two years.

Legally ensnared

Barry Bonds: Bonds dodged a perjury conviction in a federal trial related to his testimony in the BALCO doping scandal but was convicted of obstruction of justice, a conviction that is still under appeal. However, the crux of that trial was based on whether he "knowingly" took steroids. Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was jailed on numerous occasions for refusing to testify against Bonds. The book Game of Shadows breaks down in excruciating detail the arc of Bonds' alleged used, which it claims began after the 1998 season. Those details have not been credibly disputed. For what it's worth, Bonds had a near-Hall of Fame career (411 home runs, 445 steals, a .996 OPS) from 1986-98, years in which he was ostensibly clean. By the time his 22-year career wrapped up in 2007, he had a record 762 home runs and a 1.051 OPS.

Roger Clemens: The biggest name ensnared in baseball's 2007 Mitchell Report on PED use, Clemens will learn this year if his successful fight to avoid federal perjury charges -- and his seven Cy Young Awards -- resonate with voters more than allegations from his former trainer that he took steroids and growth hormone between the years of 1998-2001. Clemens won 354 games over his career, including 213 wins and four Cy Young Awards before he supposedly started using PEDs. But voters must weigh whether the allegations leveled by Brian McNamee -- at least partially corroborated by former teammate Andy Pettitte -- resonate more than Clemens' June 2012 acquittal on six charges of lying to Congress and obstruction. Clemens sued McNamee for defamation in 2008, a suit eventually dismissed by a series of federal judges. McNamee's defamation suit against Clemens, filed in 2009, is still winding through the legal process in New York.

Circumstantially linked

Sammy Sosa: McGwire was admittedly doped up when he slugged a then-record 70 home runs in 1998. The only player who could keep pace with him? Sosa, who finished with 66. Seven years later, they both testified before Congress about PED use. While Sosa came out a bit better than McGwire, his suddenly faulty English and statement that he had not "broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," where steroids can be legally purchased, did not help his cause. Sosa's statement that he "never took performance-enhancing drugs" was investigated by a House committee in 2010 after a New York Times report said he was among a group of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 survey testing. But the House panel did not recommend the Department of Justice investigate Sosa, perhaps in part because of a five-year statute of limitations on such investigations.

Nothing but whispers

Jeff Bagwell: There has been no evidence that Bagwell used PEDs during a career in which he hit 449 home runs, had a .297 batting average, won an MVP award and finished in the top three two other times, all easily Hall credentials. In fact, his career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) put him in elite, sure-fire Hall territory. But his bulky physique and the large disconnect between his minor-league and major league production (he hit six home runs in 731 minor-league at-bats) have tailed him. Bagwell received 42% and 56% of the vote his first two years on the ballot, and barring any PED evidence emerging, figures to eventually win election. But in a 2010 interview with ESPN.com, Bagwell seemed to sense that he might be a victim of his era when it came to Hall of Fame voting. "I know a lot of people are saying, 'His body got bigger.'" Bagwell said then. "Well, if you're eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and you're working out and bench pressing, you're going to get bigger. You can go to every single trainer and they'll say, 'He was the first here and last to leave, and that dude worked his ass off.'"

Mike Piazza: Like Bagwell, Piazza had famously modest amateur credentials -- he was drafted in the 62nd round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. Then, he developed into arguably the greatest-hitting catcher of all time as baseball's steroid era blossomed. That's put him in the crosshairs of suspicion, though he has publicly denied using PEDs. One on-the-record assertion that Piazza doped came in Jeff Pearlman's 2009 book on Clemens, The Rocket Who Fell To Earth. Reggie Jefferson, a major league first baseman/outfielder from 1991-99, said Piazza's use was widely assumed by his peers. "He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it,"Jefferson said. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."

Baseball Hall of Fame ballot 2013

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa debut
11-28-12
http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-11-28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-2013-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-sammy-sosa-ped-eligi

The Baseball Writers’ Association has unveiled its 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, which, as expected, is full of controversial first-time candidates.

Among the first-timers with proven or suspected ties to performance-enhancing drugs are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. All have put up Hall-worthy numbers (Bonds is the all-time home run king; Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts and ninth all time in wins; and Sosa is eighth all time in homers), but the steroids stigma hangs over them.

The ball now is in the hands of the more than 600 voters, who thus far have shown no willingness to give PED-tainted candidates anywhere close to the 75 percent of the vote required for induction. Mark McGwire’s best showing came in 2010 when he got 23.7 percent of the vote.

More details about the 2013 ballot:

The 24 newcomers

Sandy Alomar Jr., Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Jose Mesa, Mike Piazza, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Woody Williams.

The 13 returning candidates

Jack Morris (14th time eligible, named on 66.7 percent of ballots last year); Jeff Bagwell (3rd, 56.0 percent); Lee Smith (11th, 50.6 percent); Tim Raines (6th, 48.7 percent); Alan Trammell (12th, 36.8 percent); Edgar Martinez (4th, 36.5 percent); Fred McGriff (4th, 23.9 percent); Larry Walker (3rd, 22.9 percent); Mark McGwire (7th, 19.5 percent); Don Mattingly (13th, 17.8 percent); Dale Murphy (15th, 14.5 percent); Rafael Palmeiro (3rd, 12.6 percent); Bernie Williams (2nd, 9.6 percent)

The process

The results of the vote will be announced Jan. 9, with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony set for July 28 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall

In struggle and sports

Dave Z

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/21/2010-08-21_opinion_roger_clemens_is_no_saint_but_baseball_owners_executives_need_to_be_held.html

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall
by Dave Zirin

Roger Clemens is about as popular in baseball circles as jock itch. The man is such a pariah, he makes Barry Bonds look like Justin Bieber. Yet we should hold the cheers over the recent news that Clemens has been indicted on perjury charges for lying in front of Congress on questions related his much-denied steroid use.

However, the real question here is: Why Clemens was dragged in front of Congress in the first place? We can ask the same of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and all the players who have been put under the congressional hot lights. To put it bluntly, why have players, and not team owners, been given the third degree? Not one owner has ever been called to account for the steroid era in Major League Baseball. Not one person who has called an owner's box home has had to answer questions about steroid use.

This would be akin to investigating the oil rig workers after the Deepwater Horizon spill, but leaving BP bigwigs untouched. Yes, individual players may have made terrible personal decisions that sullied the game. But there's a systemic problem here, too. And the absence of corporate accountability around this issue is simply breathtaking.

In February 2005, Major League Commissioner Bud Selig — a former team owner himself — made the following statement about steroids: "I [had]never heard about it." That strains credulity to the breaking point. As sports writer D.K. Wilson has noted, "General managers know if a star player reported to spring training at 185 lbs. one season and 215 the next, and whether that newly added 30 pounds was fat or muscle, or a combination of both. As does the team owner — or at least one who's not asleep in the executive suite."

The issue of performance enhancing drugs had been discussed at Major League Baseball's winter ownership meetings as far back as 1988. Assuming he was awake at these meetings, Selig — then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers — would have heard the words of former Cleveland Indians trainer Brent Starr.

"Here's the thing that really bothers me," Starr said in 2007. "They sit there, meaning the commissioners office, Bud Selig and that group...They sit there and say, ‘Well, now that we know that this happened were going to do something about it.' I have notes from the Winter Meetings where the owners group and the players association sat in meetings with the team physicians and team trainers. I was there. And team physicians stood up and said, ‘Look, we need to do something about this. We've got a problem here if we don't do something about it. That was in 1988.'"

The roots of the current crisis lie not in the individual moral failings of players like Clemens, but from systemic greed at the highest levels of the sport. The juicing of the game began in earnest in 1994, when a players' strike mutated into an owners lockout that led to the cancellation of the World Series. The popularity of what was once "America's pastime" sank to a shameful low.

Then, the muscles started coming in — and the bucks along with them. The protracted pitching battles of old were replaced by games that were essentially home run derbies. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were, briefly, the heroes of the day. And so, helped by steroids, baseball came back into fashion as a new, juiced-up sport of A-Rod clones. Steroids were simply a quiet part of the marketing plan.

Therefore, despite your personal views on Roger Clemens, it must be acknowledged that the steroid era has been, to paraphrase a famous quote about the criminal justice system, like a magical fishing night that captures the minnows while the whales go free. Even when the minnows are as unpleasant as Clemens, this fundamental truth must be acknowledged.

Zirin is author of the new book "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." He is also, tragically, a Mets fan.

Mark McGwire's Pound of Flesh

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/515740/mark_mcgwire_s_pound_of_flesh

Mark McGwire's Pound of Flesh
by Dave Zirin

In the ten years Brian Williams has anchored the NBC Nightly News, he has never once launched a broadcast by lambasting a public figure. Henry Paulson after the economic collapse? George W. Bush after Katrina? Dick Cheney after everything? All were spared the personal disdain of "America's most trusted newsman." Until yesterday. Williams began his broadcast by going after true evil: Mark McGwire.

As Williams said:

"Good evening. Because this is a family broadcast, we probably can't say what we'd like to about the news today that Mark McGwire -- the home run hitter, the family favorite from the St. Louis Cardinals -- stopped lying today and admitted that he did it while on steroids... He's been unable to get into the Hall of Fame and, apparently -- even for him -- the shame here was too much."

Yes, cue the vultures, for retired slugger Mark McGwire has finally admitted the obvious and told the world he used steroids and other performance enhancers throughout his playing career. He clears his conscience a half-decade after a disastrous appearance in front of Congress, simulcast on C-SPAN and ESPN, where he auto-repeated "I'm not here to talk about the past" to his inquisitors. Monday's admission today, in advance of starting work as the new hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, is a shocker right up there with "Sarah Palin finds work at Fox News." His teary audio confession also further cements McGwire's reputation as the Hamlet of the Steroid Era: tortured, indecisive, self-pitying, and in constant mourning about his own frailties.

For anyone who hoped that McGwire's confession could spark an opportunity to have an honest discussion about how we understand that juiced period in baseball history, from roughly 1992-2006, these hopes were quickly liquidated. Now is the time of the Sunday morning hangover and everyone is a born again zealot, personified by the harrumphing visage of Brian Williams. The media, so happy to cheerlead the home run barrage during the 1990s, now want an apology parade of humbled players swimming in tears and begging for mercy.

Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN penned a piece called, Line of Truth Starts Behind McGwire. He wrote:

"Bonds, Sosa and Clemens owe the game a similar apology. By finally taking the truth plunge, McGwire gives them, and other players, the perfect opportunity to make amends."

Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports went even further. In a column artfully titled McGwire's Feckless Admission is too Late, Brown writes:

"We've become so comfortable blaming Bud Selig and Don Fehr, we forget the real villains in this. They're McGwire, Canseco, A-Rod, Palmeiro, Bonds, every man in the Mitchell Report, every player who put a needle in his body and made the next player choose between that and pumping gas for a living, everyone too cowardly to compete straight up."

If you want to know "how the sausages were made" in the steroid era, read the above passages again. Yes, there is truth in what Wojciechowski and Brown write. But like a sausage, by the time the meat has been transformed it is entirely unrecognizable, and while zesty, entirely unhealthy. As early as 1992, every aspect of baseball management were officially on notice about steroids. MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent sent a memo to every team reading, "The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by Major League players and personnel is strictly prohibited ... [and those players involved] are subject to discipline by the Commissioner and risk permanent expulsion from the game.... This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids..."

We now know that general managers assessed whether they thought a player was juicing when they made trades. We know that trainers and their lackeys helped the players score a wide variety of performance enhancers. We know that the Dominican Republic, where Major League Baseball invests millions to develop talent on the cheap, has steroids available over the counter with next to no oversight. Even with all of this knowledge, the media still demands little more than seeing a parade of players sob in front of the cameras while owners retreat to the shadows. It's hard not to see parallels in the absence of public accountability among the banking titans of Wall Street. For the powerful, profits mean never having to say you're sorry.

It's long past time we reframed the question and asked: what did the owners know and when did they know it? Why have no owners had to speak in front of congress? Why have owners been allowed to keep every penny from the big money, big bopping 1990s, while players have been put through the thresher? How have no owners even been threatened with punishment for allowing steroids into their locker rooms? And how in the blue hell does Bud Selig still have a job? In response to McGwire, Selig said, "The so-called "steroid era" -- a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances -- is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark's admission today is another step in the right direction." Here's another step: Bud Selig joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner). Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .

McGwire admits steroid use

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/baseball/mlb/01/11/mcgwire.steroids/

Monday January 11, 2010
McGwire admits steroid use
Story Highlights
Mark McGwire says he took steroids during much of his 16-year career
McGwire says he took them during his 70-home run season of 1998
McGwire is entering his first season as St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach

Mark McGwire hit 583 home runs in his career, including a then-record 70 in 1998.

Mark McGwire has admitted taking steroids in 1998 when he broke Roger Maris' home run record.

"I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize," McGwire said in his statement. "I remember trying steroids very briefly in the 1989/1990 off season and then after I was injured in 1993, I used steroids again. I used them on occasion throughout the nineties, including during the 1998 season. I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.

"I'm sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn't take any and I had bad years when I didn't take any. I had good years when I took steroids and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn't have done it and for that I'm truly sorry. Baseball is really different now -- it's been cleaned up. The Commissioner and the Players Association implemented testing and they cracked down, and I'm glad they did."

McGwire is entering his first season as the hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, and his return to baseball prompted his admission. "It's time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected," McGwire said. That echoes the phrase he used repeatedly during a Congressional inquiry into steroids in baseball in 2005, when he stonewalled questions about whether he had ever used steroids by saying, "I'm not here to talk about the past."

McGwire then went into seclusion for several years before being hired at the end of last season as the Cardinals' new hitting coach.

"On behalf of the entire Cardinals organization, I believe Mark McGwire today did the right thing by telling the truth and openly acknowledging his past mistakes," said Bill DeWitt, the Cardinals Chairman. "No one condones what Mark did more than 10 years ago, but we hired him as our hitting coach because we know there are many contributions that Mark can and will make to our team and to this game."

McGwire played 16 seasons in the majors with Oakland and St. Louis. He retired after the 2001 season having hit 583 home runs, which still ranks tied for eighth in major league history. His 10.61 at bats/home run is the best ever.

Tony La Russa, the Cardinals manager who hired McGwire as hitting coach and who managed McGwire with both the A's and the Cardinals, told MLB Network he did not feel duped by his former slugger, adding, "It's not excusable, it's a mistake but the perception of Mark when he played was he's a really solid individual and a great teammate and I think that will be restored."

La Russa said he first found out when McGwire spoke to him Monday morning.

Commissioner Bud Selig said he was "pleased" by McGwire's admission, adding, "This statement of contrition I believe will make Mark's re-entry into the game much smoother and easier."

Steroids have been banned in baseball since 1991, but it wasn't until 2003 that baseball began random survey testing of players that was meant to remain anonymous. Testing with punishment was not instituted until the following year. McGwire's admission is the latest in a series of drug revelations that have plagued baseball in the past 12 months, beginning with a report in Sports Illustrated last February that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003. In May, it was announced that Manny Ramirez of the Dodgers had failed a drug test and was suspended for 50 games. In June, Sammy Sosa, who had been McGwire's companion during their unforgettable chase of Maris' home run record in 1998, was revealed to have been on that 2003 list of failed tests, and in July Ramirez and Red Sox slugger David Ortiz were named from that list as well.

Andre Dawson elected to baseball Hall of Fame

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/baseball/story/1412251.html

Miami's Andre Dawson finally elected to baseball Hall of Fame
CLARK SPENCER
cspencer@MiamiHerald.com
Wednesday, 01.06.10

Andre Dawson is headed to Cooperstown.

On Wednesday, the Miami native got the phone call he has been waiting nine years to receive, the one delivering the news of his election to baseball's Hall of Fame.

Dawson, 55, was the only player elected this year, receiving 420 votes out of 539 ballots cast (77.9 percent).

Dawson had fallen short of election his previous eight years on the ballot.

But after finishing with 67 percent of the vote last year, he finally crossed the 75 percent barrier necessary for enshrinement with baseball's all-time greats.

Dawson spent 21 seasons in the majors, most with the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs, before ending his playing career in 1996 with the Marlins.

Now an executive with his hometown team, Dawson is the first Marlins player to make it to the Hall of Fame.

Dawson grew up in South Florida, graduating from Southwest Miami Senior High and Florida A&M University.

Meanwhile, Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar fell short of earning baseball's highest honor.

Blyleven had 400 votes (74.2 percent), up from 338 last year, and the pitcher will likely get in because he has two more tries on the BBWAA ballot. The highest percentage for a player who wasn't elected in a later year was 63.4 by Gil Hodges in 1983, his final time on the ballot.

``Hopefully, next year will be my time,'' Blyleven said in an interview on MLB Network.

Alomar received 397 votes (73.7 percent) in the second baseman's first appearance and was followed by pitcher Jack Morris with 282 (52.3 percent), a big rise from his 237 last year.

``I feel disappointed, but next year hopefully I make it in,'' Alomar said at his home in New York. ``At least I was close.''

Cincinnati shortstop Barry Larkin, also making his first appearance, was on 278 ballots (51.6 percent), followed by reliever Lee Smith at 255 (47.3 percent) and Edgar Martinez at 195 (36.2 percent). Martinez, on the ballot for the first time, is viewed as an early test of how voters will receive players who were primarily designated hitters.

Mark McGwire received 128 votes (23.7 percent), 10 more than last year and matching the total from his first two times on the ballot. Eighth on the career list with 583 homers, he has been stigmatized since evading questions from Congress in 2005 about steroids use.

Dawson will be inducted July 25 at Cooperstown along with manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, elected last month by the Veterans Committee.

This report was supplemented with material from Herald wire services.

Home Runs and Hypocrisy

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin

Home Runs and Hypocrisy: The Shaming of Manny Ramirez
By Dave Zirin

You would think that Manny Ramirez was caught fighting pit bulls alongside Martha Stewart.

ESPN's Bill Simmons says that he is "confronting my worst nightmare." Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports believes that it is time to talk about "lifetime bans." Boston Globe writer Tony Massarotti says, "everyone is guilty until proven innocent."

The sports radio and comment boards have been cesspools of racism. It's always easy to hate, especially someone who plays a game for a living and makes millions of dollars.

All I know is this: thanks to Major League Baseball's hypocritical, idiotic and altogether morally bankrupt steroid policy, the sport will be without one of its premier attractions for fifty games, someone I would pay to watch at batting practice. Yes, Manny Ramirez, the finest right-handed hitter of his generation, has been sent to the showers and forced to surrender $7.7 million in salary after testing positive for what was initially called a "performance-enhancing substance."

The decision ends a stretch where the former World Series MVP was reviving baseball in Los Angeles, leading the Dodgers to a 21-8 start and a record thirteen straight wins at home to open the season. Los Angeles, a town built on artifice and home to hordes of performance-enhanced entertainers, not to mention led by a performance-enhanced governor, now demands purity of its athletes. This is not a column that aims to "defend" Manny Ramirez, but condemn Major League Baseball's steroid idiocy. Besides, the quizzically quirky Ramirez is not at this point defending himself. Ramirez will not appeal the suspension and apologized, issuing a brief statement, which read in part: "I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me." But MLB, in a typically classy move, has leaked to the press that Ramirez tested positive for the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. Steroid specialists have fanned out across the airwaves explaining that HCG is used to increase testosterone levels, usually after a heavy steroid cycle.

Former AL MVP, author of Juiced, and admitted steroid user Jose Canseco, who pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor of trying to bring HCG across the Mexican border illegally, also weighed in: "It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold-turkey and needed HCG to get his [testoterone] levels back to normal."

The use of a "female fertility drug" also has sports radio hosts in a pubescent tizzy asking if "Manny is a mommy" and ESPN's Jayson Stark making an "octo-mom" joke.

From the juvenile to the pious, President Obama's press flack Robert Gibbs took time out from explaining why torturers are above the law to tell us, "It's a tragedy, it's a shame." There is a tragedy and a shame afoot, but it is not rooted in the choices of one player. It's in a baseball culture that continues to think embarrassing individual players and feeding on the resentment of fans is the best path to cleaning up the sport. Manny has now joined Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and many others as permanently stained with a scarlet S. No Hall of Fame, no old timers' games and a life as a cautionary tale.

Meanwhile we all get taken to the cleaners. We have billionaire owners making scapegoats of millionaire players to soothe our anxieties about the game and our lives. Meanwhile these same owners sit like pashas in a baseball palace that could be called the House That Steroids Built.

The man who wrote Juiced knows when a cycle has run its course. Canseco said that he believes the coverage on steroids in baseball has become "overkill" and the spotlight should now be on MLB and the players association. He called it "a complete conspiracy." He's absolutely correct. Baseball owners love conspiracies. For more than twenty years they have conspired to attain public funds for ballparks. In 2008, they collectively conspired not to sign the best hitter in the game, Barry Bonds. Now they are committed to the project of keeping the focus on the players, and off of themselves. We shouldn't let them. If Manny Ramirez is guilty of anything, it's being caught in between baseball's clubhouse culture and public sanctimony.

During the baseball's Summer of Love in 1998, when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs and Sammy Sosa smacked 66, the money came pouring in. No one cared that McGwire and Sosa looked like a pair of defensive tackles. Soon publicly funded stadiums were included in budgets for Washington, DC, New York City and Minnesota. The home run became the most marketable baseball item since peanuts and crackerjacks and no one wanted to look behind the curtain. It was sports. It was entertainment. It was an escape. Then came 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73, and all of a sudden we were supposed to be collectively sick at the thought of a home run. As baseball writer Adrian Burgos (Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line) said, "What continues to fascinate me is how MLB leadership is willing to allow individual players to take the full brunt of the collective failure of leadership. Today, pundits have ranted in at times rabid tones about the players who make millions for their role while those who make the hundred of millions (and even have billion- dollar stadiums constructed for them on the public dole) continue to profit. How many stadiums have been built since then and at what cost? All the wealth that has been accumulated at that level is in my mind just as, if not more, offensive, since the owners act as if they were not enablers and co-dependents as their players shot up, ingested and otherwise partook in performance-enhancing drugs."

We should always remember that former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush made steroid persecution a recurring theme of his time in office, as long as owners were spared the spotlight. The hypocrisy should shame owners toward contrition--but they will happily crack some golden eggs, as long as it means that the goose that laid them lives. Even though come contract time, it's all about the numbers on your stat page, and not the number of clean tests. As baseball fan and poet Martin Espada told me, "Baseball is the Main Street of sports. (Think Cooperstown.) It's full of history and nostalgia, and paved with the bricks of hypocrisy. Now it's the rhetoric of the 'Drug War,' handed down from the Nixon White House forty years ago to MLB and ESPN today."

He is absolutely correct. We are supposed to tsk-tsk at players who are supposed to "just say no" to their addictions to fitness and monster stats, when their success at the park is our addiction as well. We also have yet to truly take owners to task for their addictions to public money and send them to detox.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Ramirez suspended 50 games for drug violation

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AozPbdpnRxDcG.ttoQ3gr6URvLYF?slug=ap-dodgers-ramirez-drugs

Ramirez suspended 50 games for drug violation
By BETH HARRIS and RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writers
5-7-9

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Manny Ramirez joined a growing lineup of All-Stars linked to drugs Thursday, with the dreadlocked slugger banished for 50 games by a sport that cannot shake free from scandal.

The Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder was suspended by Major League Baseball for a drug violation, adding a further stamp to what will forever be known as the Steroids Era.

“It’s a dark day for baseball and certainly for this organization,” Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti told reporters on the field at Dodger Stadium. “This organization will never condone anything that isn’t clean.”

Ramirez said he did not take steroids and was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance. A person familiar with the details of the suspension said Ramirez used the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the banned substance wasn’t announced.

“As tough as it is for us, it’s pretty tough for Manny, too,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. “I know he’s the one that did the wrong thing and nobody is trying to cover that up, but it’s still something that I know he’s sorry about.”

HCG is popular among steroid users because it can mitigate the side effects of ending a cycle of the drugs. The body may stop producing testosterone when users go off steroids, which can cause sperm counts to decrease and testicles to shrink.

Ramirez’s suspension was based not on a spring training urine test result but rather evidence obtained afterward, a second person familiar with the suspension said, speaking on condition of anonymity because those details were not released. MLB had concluded the spring test was positive, but the person said the players’ association would have challenged the result because of “testing issues.”

Ranked 17th on the career home run list with 533, Ramirez became the most prominent baseball player to be penalized for drugs. His ban came three months after Alex Rodriguez admitted using steroids, and at a time when Barry Bonds is under federal indictment and Roger Clemens is being investigated by a federal grand jury to determine whether he lied when he told Congress he never used steroids or human growth hormone. And Miguel Tejada was sentenced in March to one year of probation after pleading guilty in federal court to misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

No matter which way baseball turns, the legitimacy of many of its recent home run and pitching records is being questioned. Sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have been tainted by steroid allegations, Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for a banned drug and Jose Canseco said he used them.

In every case, players once believed to be locks for the Hall of Fame may now be locked out.

“You can’t have arguably the greatest pitcher of our era, arguably the two greatest players of our era and now another very, very good player be under this cloud of suspicion and not feel like it has ruined it for everybody,” Atlanta star Chipper Jones said.

“But what are you going to do? You can’t be born in a different era. It is the Steroid Era,” he said.

Colletti and Torre said they found out about Ramirez’s suspension during an early morning phone call from team owner Frank McCourt. Both said they were surprised and saddened at the news.

Torre spoke to the rest of the team during a closed-door meeting before batting practice.

“The mood was sad in the clubhouse,” he said. “You can’t have someone who’s as much of an impact player and personality as Manny missing without it affecting people.”

The 36-year-old Ramirez tried to make amends right away, telling the Dodgers and fans he was sorry for “this whole situation.”

“Recently, I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me,” Ramirez said in a statement issued by the players’ union.

“Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”

Baseball added HCG to its list of banned substances last year.

His suspension was first reported by the Los Angeles Times on its Web site.

While Ramirez had little to say, Canseco was quick to explain why someone might use HCG.

“It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold-turkey and needed HCG to get his levels back to normal. I had to use it when I quit steroids cold-turkey,” Canseco, who pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor of trying to bring HCG across the Mexican border into the United States illegally, told the AP. “I had to go to a doctor to get it and get my levels back.”

Because MLB imposed the suspension as required by the drug agreement, the Dodgers cannot further discipline Ramirez. He is allowed to work out with the Dodgers but must be out of uniform when the stadium gates open for games.

Ramirez was not mentioned in the Mitchell Report, MLB’s official report on drug use, and there had not been whispers that he was among the sport’s juiced players.

“It’s kind of shocking that he got caught up in anything, honestly. Manny likes to play stupid, but he’s a pretty bright guy. And he’s definitely aware of a lot of things that he tries to act like he’s completely oblivious to,” said Cincinnati pitcher Bronson Arroyo, Ramirez’s former Boston teammate.

Ramirez’s agent, Scott Boras, and the players’ association had gathered materials for a possible appeal to an arbitrator, but Ramirez decided not to file one because he didn’t want to risk missing significant time in the second half of the season, the person familiar with details of the suspension said. The union said merely that he waived his right to contest the suspension.

Reaction to Ramirez’s ban came swiftly, from major league clubhouses to the White House.

“It’s a tragedy. It’s a shame. My sense is, it’s a great embarrassment on Major League Baseball,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

The penalty left the best team in the majors without its driving force and free spirit for nearly one-third of the season.

Ramirez’s suspension began Thursday, a day after the Dodgers broke the modern major league record for a home winning streak, opening the season 13-0. Barring any postponements, he will be able to return to the Dodgers for the July 3 game at San Diego. Ramirez will lose $7,650,273 of his $25 million salary.

Rodriguez and Ramirez are the two highest-paid players in the majors. With this suspension, six of the top 17 home run hitters in history now have been covered by the cloud of performance-enhancing drugs.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig couldn’t comment on the suspension because of provisions of the management-union drug agreement, spokesman Rich Levin said.

Ramirez became the fourth player suspended this year under the major league program, following Philadelphia reliever J.C. Romero, Yankees pitcher Sergio Mitre and San Francisco pitcher Kelvin Pichardo.

The Dodgers began the 50-game stretch without Ramirez on Thursday night against Washington. Juan Pierre received loud applause when he was introduced as Ramirez’s replacement in the starting lineup, but there were scattered boos when he came to the plate for the first time.

Losing Ramirez to suspension could be a huge blow financially for the Dodgers. The slugger has been single-handedly responsible for increasing attendance, merchandise sales and interest in the team, besides helping it win the NL West after his late-season arrival in 2008.

Los Angeles even renamed a section of seats in left field at Dodger Stadium “Mannywood” in his honor. Hours after the suspension, the team removed a reference to those seats from its Web site.

Torre, however, insisted Ramirez is welcome anytime.

“The thing that was toughest for Manny is how he disappointed everybody,” he said. “He loved it here, and he loves how the fans get turned on by him. He was devastated.”

Associated Press Baseball Writer Ron Blum reported from New York, with AP Sports Writer Beth Harris in Los Angeles. AP Sports Writers Dan Gelston in Philadelphia, Joe Kay in Cincinnati, R.B. Fallstrom in St. Louis, Stephen Wilson in London and Steve Wine in Miami, National Writer Ben Walker in New York and AP Writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

McGwire's Brother: "I Introduced Mark to Steroids"

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/baseball-insider/2009/01/mcgwires_brother_i_introduced.html

McGwire's Brother: "I Introduced Mark to Steroids"
By Cameron Smith
January 22, 2009

Occasionally, the blogosphere really does break the biggest news. That appears to be the case in the latest significant steroids development, where slugger Mark McGwire's younger brother, Jay, is now claiming that he introduced Mark to steroids in a memoir manuscript that he's shopping to publishers. In the details contained in the excerpts that have been leaked to the counter-cultural sports blog deadspin.com, Jay McGwire even claims that he was the first person to inject Mark with steroids, at least until a girlfriend took over the responsibility.

There are too many juicy excerpts to get into all of them, but here's our choice pick among them.

"I directed him to androstenedione testosterone booster, which is non-hormonal (which is why it can be sold legally and is not affected by the 2004 Anabolic Steroid Control Act) and works naturally with your body. "Andro" increases strength and aggression while promoting reduction of body fat and a leaner look to the physique....[U]sing andro allowed Mark to avoid all the potential adverse side effects that could occur from using anabolic steroids, such as water retention, hair loss, and liver, heart, or kidney stress. In addition, he wouldn't have cholesterol problems or testicular atrophy. And there were no problems with the law."

"Who knows what might have happened if I didn't get Mark involved with all the training, supplements, the right foods, steroids, and HGH. He would not have broken any records and the Congressional Hearings would have gone on without him. Maybe Barry Bonds wouldn't have ever gotten involved with the stuff, either. Mark McGwire might have gone silently into the night long before breaking Roger Maris' home run record. But that's just not the way it went down, so we'll never know. But at least I feel better about setting the record straight."

Also discussed: Mark McGwire's irascible 'roid rage and his pleading the fifth. It'll be interesting to see if anyone can drag more comments out of Jay McGwire, because something tells us this is the last we'll see of this book proposal.

Rice joins Henderson as baseball Hall of Famers

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/hallfame/2009-01-12-henderson-rice-elected_N.htm

Rice joins Henderson as newest baseball Hall of Famers
By Mel Antonen, USA TODAY

Rickey Henderson, baseball's all-time steals leader, was elected in overwhelming fashion to baseball's Hall of Fame on his first year of eligibility, while Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice also earned election to Cooperstown in his last year on the ballot.

In balloting released Monday by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, Henderson was named on 511 ballots (94.8%), a sweeping endorsement of the player considered by many to be the finest leadoff hitter of all time.

Rice's ticket to Cooperstown was stamped in a far more tenuous fashion.

Having failed election on 14 previous appearances on the ballot, Rice was named on 412 ballots, the 76.4% barely edging him over the 75% required for induction.

Henderson, who turned 50 on Christmas Day, is the all-time king of stolen bases with 1,406 and considered one of the most dangerous leadoff batters of all-time.

"When Rickey Henderson got on base, he could change the course of the game like no other player," Tony La Russa, Henderson's former manager with the Oakland Athletics, said last spring.

The induction ceremony is July 26 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Henderson played for the Athletics from 1979-84, then rejoined them in 1989 in a trade with the New York Yankees. He batted leadoff on their 1989 World Series champion team and a year later won the AL MVP as the A's won a third consecutive pennant.

Henderson, who led the league in runs scored five times and steals a dozen times, was a 10-time All-Star. In addition to his steals, he holds the career record for runs (2,295) and his 2,190 walks ranks second. Henderson had 3,055 career hits.

He played for nine teams and hit .284 with 33 steals in 60 postseason games. His trademark postseason series was the 1989 American League Championship Series, when he batted .400 with a .609 on-base percentage, going 8-for-8 in steals when the Athletics beat the Toronto Blue Jays.

Rice, who missed enshrinement by 16 votes last year with 72.2%, averaged .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBI during his 16-year career, all with the Boston Red Sox.

Andre Dawson (361 votes, 67%) and Bert Blyleven (338 votes, 62.7%) were the only other players listed on more than half of the ballots. Mark McGwire received 118 votes and 21.9%, down from 23.6% last year and 23.5% in his first year of eligibility.

Tommy John, who won 288 games in 26 seasons, received 31.6% of the votes in his final year on the ballot.

Mark McGwire’s summer of love

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-mcgwireanniversary090808

Mark McGwire’s summer of love
By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
Sep 8, 2008

There is no right way to feel about Monday. There was joy. It was justified. There is now sadness. It is justified.

There was appreciation, amazement and fondness, and there is now betrayal, disappointment and fraudulence, and Monday, the 10th anniversary of Mark McGwire scorching his 62nd home run over the left-field fence at Busch Stadium, triggers the emotional gamut because each side is indubitably tied to the other.

The duality will forever exist when looking back on 1998, the happiest time in recent baseball history. It was baseball’s Summer of Love, wondrous and carefree, where drug use was ignored and life celebrated. Everyone, from baseball neophytes to lifers, got caught up in the back-and-forth home run duel between McGwire and Sammy Sosa as they chased Roger Maris’ single-season record.

There were only heroes. For the pursuit to gather the following it did without a foil, a villain off of whom McGwire and Sosa could play, was a testament to its power, to how sports, baseball in particular, can serve as an escape from the vagaries. And it’s one of the ironies looking back, that what was thought to be so pure was, in all likelihood, as dirty as it comes.

The unvarnished truth about that summer will someday emerge. Until then, the principals leave us only to our suppositions. They want to address only the good vibrations, and who can blame them, what with guilt heavier than lead. That summer did change the game, and for the better. It was also the flashpoint of so many regretful moments, ones that tarnished baseball and cannot be swept aside like a pile of dust. They’re heavy, too.

To look back on McGwire and Sosa, then, on the summer of ‘98 and on 62, isn’t so much to decide whether to celebrate or lament. It instead reminds us that innocence is a wonderful thing until it’s there no more.

There is little as quintessentially American as hitting a home run. It is quick, powerful, majestic, the dynamic result of a game of chicken between the hitter and pitcher.

Mark McGwire hit home runs as well as anyone. His were special. They climbed deep into the night, another fleck of white on the panorama of stars, and landed farther from home plate than any of his contemporaries’. Stadiums opened early because fans clamored to see McGwire take batting practice and swat balls into upper decks 500 feet away.

He was Paul Bunyan, a bat his ax, with biceps as big as oil pipelines. The caricature was apt. As McGwire crept closer to Maris’ hallowed mark, it was like he was some sort of fictitious force, literally a machine built to hit home runs. How true that was.

No one knew, and no one really cared, either. Logic should have screamed that this was all a fraud, a sham, a pharmacologically aided freak show. But it was fun. Logic loses in the face of fun.

So the nation celebrated. No longer were Mac and Sammy property of the Cardinals and Cubs. They were everyone’s.

Remember what it was like? Cell phones were just becoming everyday accessories. E-mail wasn’t the primary mode of communication. Texting barely existed. Newspapers were the main source of sports knowledge. The water cooler wasn’t just a metaphor. It was where people gathered in the morning to giddily ask: See what McGwire and Sosa did last night?

Baseball, deflated by the strike that canceled the 1994 World Series, had its defibrillator. Certainly Cal Ripken Jr. breaking the consecutive-games-played record in 1995 was a special moment, his victory lap around Camden Yards touching. It was one night. McGwire and Sosa dueled all summer. Mac would get hot. Sammy would answer. And it was like that every day. When one of them didn’t hit a home run, it was a letdown.

They reminded the public that it could love baseball again, a sentiment that bled into the next decade and has positioned the game so well today. Baseball is financially booming, full of young and marketable stars, rejecting the notion that only the teams with the highest payrolls win, flush with great stories and readying for a postseason that could end with a World Series between the Cubs and Red Sox, something that, 10 years ago, seemed inconceivable.

At the same time, it is still shaking off what 1998 begat. The first sign of discord came when an Associated Press reporter noticed a bottle of androstenedione in McGwire’s locker. Andro is a steroid precursor and later would be banned by Major League Baseball. McGwire scoffed at the notion that it had anything to do with his home runs.

He kept hitting, and the masses kept cheering. Years later, when the breadth of steroid use in baseball revealed itself through admissions and testing and the Mitchell Report, the attention initially turned toward McGwire and Sosa. They sat on Capitol Hill two broken men, McGwire refusing to “talk about the past” with domineering Congressmen, Sosa feigning not to speak English. It was pathetic, the stars of that summer, the conquerors, cowering in front of men half their size.

That day changed the way we looked at McGwire and Sosa, even if neither ever tested positive for steroids. There was an assumption of guilt. The good feelings weren’t erased. They couldn’t be. They would just come with a caveat.

Heroes were OK, so long as they passed their drug tests, and even then, they’re probably on some kind of designer steroid or human growth hormone or who knows what else. It’s something everyone who watches baseball – who watches professional sports – accepts, naïve though it may be.

Because for most, the feeling of betrayal from knowing that McGwire and Sosa were, in all likelihood, juiced to the gills does not counterbalance what was derived from watching them hit those home runs. If ever home run No. 62 ends up in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, alongside it will stand a plaque explaining its significance. And the first thing mentioned certainly will not be steroids.

At the same time, the notion that this, the 10th anniversary, causes a pebble-in-the-ocean ripple is a stark reminder of how McGwire and Sosa’s accomplishments have been rendered almost meaningless.

The historical value of McGwire’s ultimate number that season, 70, died in 2001 when Barry Bonds smashed 73. Bonds allegedly began abusing steroids because he was livid that McGwire, an inferior player, was lavished with attention and adoration.

It was short-lived. McGwire retired in 2001 and spends the majority of his time raising his two kids in a gated community in California. He avoids the spotlight and always declines St. Louis manager Tony La Russa’s invitation to return to the Cardinals as a spring-training instructor. He still has not admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. When seen in public, he carries considerably less weight on his frame than in ‘98, much like Sosa, who took the 2006 season off, hit 21 home runs for Texas last year and couldn’t find a job this season.

McGwire looks at ‘98 as a special time, no surprise, and in his lone interview this week, with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, called it “so spiritual, so universal.” At the time, it was: his, Sosa’s, the game’s, the public’s. Everyone shared it.

And everyone, likewise, feels some way about it today, happy, sad or conflicted. There is a generation of baseball fans who knew life before steroids, a generation that grew up with the specter of them and a generation today that doesn’t quite understand how they nearly destroyed the game, not because of their effect on numbers or records but the chasm they created between what we thought we knew and what was the truth.

It’s still there, and in order to love baseball anymore takes subversion. There is drug testing, and in some senses it works. Twelve young Latin American players signed with major league organizations tested positive last week, the latest haul in a flood of positives from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. On one hand, it’s good to know the testing works. On the other, it’s scary to think just how necessary it is.

McGwire and Sosa are due the baseball fans’ appreciation. For the summer of ‘98, of course, and all the memories it created. And for opening our eyes. Surely we wouldn’t have toiled along getting duped forever. But the steroid era resonated because it involved big moments, and McGwire and Sosa’s getting tarnished helped the public understand the severity.

Which leaves us where, exactly? Perhaps in purgatory. It’s OK to love the moment and loathe its repercussions, or to feel however you feel. There is no right way. Only to remember that what we once held so sacred we can never fully have back.

Jeff Passan is a national baseball writer for Yahoo! Sports. Send Jeff a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast

Beast of the Month - May 2008

Beast of the Month - May 2008
Roger Clemens, Cooperstown Caliber Major League Pitcher

"I yam an anti-Christ... "
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"There is no joy in Mudville."
Ernest Lawrence Thayer, “Casey at the Bat”

Okay, fine, we get it. It's no longer just about unconvincing performances before Congress by Sammy or Mac, nor is it about Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro or even Barry Bonds. Steroids is no longer the exception to the rule in baseball, it is the rule. And sorry Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

That would be lesson after the release of the Mitchell Report, the investigative report commissioned by Major League Baseball that named at least some of the names of the steroid era, a list that still is likely the tip of the iceberg. Iceberg tip or not, the names of drug dopers could field a team of All-Stars that would hold their own against the '27 Yankees. Among the roster, besides Giambi and Bonds: 200-Game winner Kevin Brown, former Philadelphia Phillies hero Lenny Dykstra, 2003 NL Cy Young winner reliever Eric Gagne, 2002 World Series MVP Troy Glaus, two-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez, one-time rookie sensation Wally Joyner, 1990 Rookie of the Year and postseason hero David Justice, 1987 Rookie of the Year and Gold Glove catcher Benito Santiago, 2002 AL MVP Miguel Tejada, 1995 AL MVP Mo Vaughn and 1994 home run champion Matt Williams. And though many of these revelations came with the predictable denials and no comments, the general impression is that despite it being a tad politically compromised (tellingly, the report only named players who roided up and not executives or league officials who had knowledge of the widespread abuse) Senator George Mitchell did a solid job in his investigation, and all claims could be backed up in court.

Winners in the latest juicer revelations are few and far between. One could be Mark McGwire, who, after a number of doping indictments all related to perjury, seems all the more wiser for his infamous 2005 Congressional clam-up. The other would be Barry Bonds, whose defenders can repeat their insistence he was hardly some lone wolf and that his prosecution appears to be a politically motivated vendetta. The biggest winner, however, would have to be Jose Canseco once again. Even more so than the Mitchell Report and Game of Shadows, it is Canseco who has written the definitive account of the steroid era in baseball. In 2005, when Juiced was released, he became widely reviled in the sports press as a liar and shameless opportunist for pointing the finger at other dopers and making stunning claims along the way. Three years later, nothing in his book has been disproved and much has been found to be shockingly accurate. Despite this proven track record of reporting history, the publication of his recent sequel (cleverly titled Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball) led to a repeat of attacks on Canseco's honesty and character.

Meanwhile, there is little question who is the biggest loser from the Mitchell Report. That would be Roger Clemens, The Konformist Beast of the Month, who has replaced Bonds as the poster boy for steroid cheaters.

Clemens, like Bonds was for batters, is no mere pitcher. With all due respect to Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton (or even his current competitors Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez) The Rocket was named, in a 2006 ESPN poll of baseball experts, the greatest living pitcher by an overwhelming margin. He has won a record seven Cy Young Awards (two more than Randy Johnson, his closest competitor) and is the last starting pitcher to win an MVP trophy (after he went 24-4 for the Boston Red Sox in 1986.) His career record is 354-184 (nearly a 2 to 1 won-loss ratio) and is second only to Nolan Ryan in career strikeouts. He is also one of only three pitchers to strike out 20 batters in 9 innings (the others being Randy Johnson and Cubs one-time rookie flamethrower Kerry Wood) and he's done it twice.

(Granted, this has nothing to do with the rest of the article, but all these mentions of Randy Johnson bring up a good question: does a guy named Randy Johnson really need "The Big Unit" as a nickname?)

On a personal level, members of The Konformist staff have long admired Clemens for his tenacity, even if sometimes it has gone a tad psychotic. Of special infamy was his twin encounters with Mike Piazza of the New York Mets in 2000. After Piazza hit a grand slam off The Rocket a month earlier, Clemens beaned him on the hand and head with a single pitch during a July game. Then, in Game 2 of the World Series, Clemens threw a shard of Mikey's shattered bat at Piazza, leading to a bench-clearing on both sides. Even in this bizarre moment his greatness shines through: in that game he pitched a two-hitter with 9 strikeouts in eight innings of shutout ball, a performance that effectively silenced the Mets and led to Clemens' second World Series ring with the Yankees. This followed his one-hit shutout with 15 Ks in the ALCS, in the greatest postseason pitching performance besides Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Clearly, he was the true Yankee hero of their last World Championship.

And so it is this background that makes his inclusion on the Mitchell Report so tragic. What makes it even worse is his sad and sorry response. He could've owed up to his cheating (cheating that is apparent in evidence detailed below) in a tearful confession, a move that would've earned him long-term sympathy for honesty. Or he could've simply declared "no comment" and disappeared from public view for awhile. Instead, Clemens demanded a Congressional hearing to deny his usage of steroids. And, as Oscar Wilde would warn, when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

At first, it actually seemed like a good strategy: pit Roger Clemens word and character mano a mano against his former trainer, Brian McNamee. After all, if Canseco is, for all the accuracy of his books, a dubious character, he's got nothing on the shadiness of McNamee, a man who has since admitted lying even on the testimony that implicated Clemens. It seemed likely that, given the choice between believing McNamee against the word of Clemens, Clemens would win. He even tested this strategy somewhat successfully on 60 Minutes in an embarrassing suck-up fest "interview" by Mike Wallace.

The problem with this strategy, it turned out, is it wasn't just Clemens V. McNamee. It was Clemens V. McNamee, Andy Pettitte, and Chuck Knoblauch, two other players who McNamee outed as drug dopers. Both of them have since confirmed under oath what McNamee told Senator Mitchell. Pettitte added Clemens had admitted to him in 1999-2000 that he had received HGH injections. Clemens insists that Pettitte "misremembered" the quotes.

Not only was it Clemens V. McNamee, Pettitte and Knoblauch, it was literally Clemens V. Clemens. It was revealed by McNamee (in a rather sleazy moment) that he had injected Clemens wife Debbie with HGH for a Sports Illustrated pictorial, a claim she would later confirm. So according to Roger Clemens, Pettitte, Knoblauch and even his own wife were injected with performance enhancing drugs by his own trainer, but Clemens himself, despite his own deserved reputation for being ultra-competitive, wouldn't even dream of the doing the same.

Besides the testimony, there was physical evidence to back the charges against Clemens. McNamee may be a weasel, but he sure is a sharp weasel, saving vials, syringes and gauze pads involving his injections of Clemens, evidence McNamee handed over to prosecutors in February.

It is interesting to note how the actual Congressional hearings went. The Democrats on the committee, almost to a man and woman, pounced on Clemens' admittedly flimsy defense with glee. Perhaps it was because the case Clemens made was so beyond dubious. It certainly didn't hurt that, after Kobe, Bonds and Michael Vick, finally there was a sports scandal this decade where liberals could proclaim outrage without politically correct fears of being called a racist. But perhaps the biggest reason for the Democratic Party pounding of Clemens was due to him being a friend of the Bush family, most notably Bush Senior. As it turned out, GOP members at the hearing not-so-coincidentally seemed to go out of the way to defend Clemens and bash McNamee, making this into a partisan battle. Of course, this only inflated the circus-like nature of the hearings. In the end, neither party really won: the GOP looked like shameless defenders of outwardly deceitful testimony, while the Dems looked like a sniveling group of cowards who could only press a case in the most frivolous of causes. (Perhaps the hearings are a perfect metaphor for the last eight years on the Capitol.)

Frivolous or not, the Democrat's conclusions seem pretty solid: that Clemens did indeed take performance enhancing drugs and then perjured himself repeatedly on the issue. Despite this, it seems unlikely there will be any prosecution of Clemens over this, and even if there is, rumors are floating that Bush Jr. would pardon him at the request of his daddy. (Of course, this pardon would hardly match Scooter Libby's on the Outrage-o-meter.) In any case, it is telling to contrast the Clemens saga results with the vendetta against Bonds, and wonder, politically correct or not, if race is indeed a factor for the discrepancy.

Clemens may not face the long arm of the law, but in the court of public opinion, he has suffered the biggest loss of his career. He may be the greatest living pitcher, but five years from now (when the recently retired Clemens first becomes eligible for Cooperstown) he will likely be snubbed from Baseball's Hall of Fame over the scandal. That may the least of his worries: after filing a defamation lawsuit against McNamee, claiming his stellar reputation had been tarnished by his former trainer's allegations, reporters uncovered evidence of multiple adulterous affairs by the Rocket, including one with former country music star Mindy McCready. (When asked about the news allegation, McCready replied: "I cannot refute anything in the story.") Needless to say, besides putting obvious strain on his marriage, such revelations undercut his claim that his family man image has been unfairly tarnished by the steroid scandal.

It appears the fallout of the recent steroid revelations will soon go beyond Clemens, Bonds and others. Of special note: in Vindicated, Canseco outs current New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez as someone who asked for help in finding a trainer that would supply steroids. Rodriguez, a three-time AL MVP and a likely candidate to surpass Bonds in the career home run derby, has been hyped as a player who could supposedly restore the integrity of the game. While the charge has been hysterically denounced in the sports media in a repeat of the Juiced controversy, it is important to repeat that Canseco has a proven track record of telling the ugly truths that are eventually admitted as such.

But hopefully the steroid scandal will go beyond the current scapegoating of ballplayers. Of special note: in February, former relief ace (and infamous racist ranter) John Rocker claimed MLB commissioner Bud Selig knew he failed a drug test for steroids in 2000, and that doctors for both management and the players' association advised him and other Texas Rangers on how to effectively use steroids. (Among the other players were Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez and, of course, Alex Rodriguez.) But the real issue here isn't if A-Rod, Rocker and others were drug cheats: it's that it was known and sanctioned from the highest levels of the team, the players' union and even the league itself. This is the kind of scandalous conclusions that George Mitchell, for all his meticulous work, evaded in his report. Hopefully, this complicity in the doping scandal will soon no longer be ignored.

In any case, we salute Roger Clemens as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Roger!!!

Sources:

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, ESPN.com, MLB.com, SportingNews.com and SportsIllustrated.com for help on this article

Canseco, Jose. Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.

Canseco, Jose. Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Fainaru-Wada, Mark and Williams, Lance. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports. New York: Gotham Books, 2006.

Gammons, Peter. "Ample Living Proof of Clemens' Greatness." ESPN.com 1 May 2006 <http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=gammons_peter&id=2426053>.

Mitchell, George. Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball. 13 December 2007.

Canseco's new book expected by Opening Day '08

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3173585

Sunday, December 30, 2007
Reports: Canseco's new book expected by Opening Day '08

Jose Canseco has finalized a book deal for his sequel to "Juiced" and it is expected to hit bookstores by Opening Day of the 2008 season, two New York newspapers reported Sunday.

Robert Saunooke, Canseco's lawyer, told The New York Daily News and The New York Post that the book, which has a working title of "Vindicated" will be co-authored by former Sports Illustrated writer Don Yaeger.

The Daily News first reported the story Saturday on its Web site.

"Jose already has a lot of stuff put together," Yaeger told The Daily News.

Disappointed by the Mitchell report, Canseco hopes to publish "an unjaundiced view, without the rose-colored glasses" of steroid use in baseball, Saunooke told The Post.

"The book is basically going to be -- I don't want to say an attack -- but it will be a clarification of why certain names should have been mentioned [in the Mitchell report] that were not mentioned," Saunooke said of the new book. "We had hoped that the Mitchell report would have been more revealing. It basically ended up being nothing more than [Mitchell saying], 'I talked to a lot of people, some people wouldn't talk to me and it's up to the commissioner,'" Saunooke told The Daily News.

Saunooke told The Post that he and Canseco talked to Sen. Mitchell and provided him with "tons of information and background" on steroid use in baseball. But when the Mitchell report was released, he and Canseco were disappointed that names like Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez were not named.

Canseco's name appears 105 times in the Mitchell report, more than that of Barry Bonds (103) or Roger Clemens (82). In all, the 409-page report identified 86 names to differing degrees, but Clemens clearly was the symbol.

"I saw the list of players, and there are definitely a lot of players missing," Canseco told Fox Business Network this month. "I don't know what they accomplished or what they are trying to prove."

Prodded further about players not included, Canseco said this of Alex Rodriguez: "All I can say is the Mitchell report is incomplete. I could not believe that his name was not in the report."

One of the topics of Canseco's new book, Saunooke told The Post, will be how Mark McGwire asked for immunity before his appearance before Congress in 2005.

Another topic of Canseco's new book might be A-Rod.

In July, Canseco told WEEI Radio in Boston that he had "other stuff" on Rodriguez, who he called a "hypocrite" who "was not all he appeared to be."

"Jose has information about A-Rod and the Yankees that will be in the book. But, I am not sure if Jose is willing to disclose it at this point," Saunooke, told The New York Times in July.

In Baltimore for a Yankees' game against the Orioles that month, Rodriguez told reporters that he hadn't heard Canseco's comments about him. "And I have no comment."

In "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," Canseco called himself the "godfather of steroids in baseball," saying, "I single-handedly changed the game of baseball by introducing them into the game."

He wrote in that book that he personally injected McGwire with steroids and that he saw McGwire and Jason Giambi inject each other.

Canseco also claimed he introduced the performance enhancers to Palmeiro, Rodriguez, and Juan Gonzalez when he joined the Rangers in 1992.

Canseco hit 462 home runs in a major league career between 1985 and 2001. He played seven full seasons for the A's before being traded to Texas in '92. He also played for Boston, the Yankees, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Oakland again, and the White Sox.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.