News That's Fit To Punt - 29/Jul/2013

Won't Take It From You

This business of the asylum seekers that arrive by boat being sent to PNG as a deterrent has quite a few critics. Judging from the Q&A panel that I watched the other night it seems nobody gets the point of the policy which is deter people from handing over their hard earned cash and life savings to people smugglers who will put them on leaky boats to Christmas Island. Now, there are all kinds of critics out to brand this policy xenophobic to not tough enough, but you would be surprised at the people who want to piss into this pot.

A more irritating critique came out of Fiji today.

Mr Kubuabola said Fiji was ''decidedly less-than happy'' with the PNG deal, saying Australian politics was affecting Fijian affairs and demanded that Australia consult with the region.

''It is our business. Before this goes any further, we want thorough regional consultation ... We demand to have our voices heard.''

Mr Kubuabola said that Australia had used its ''economic muscle'' to persuade PNG to accept the deal that would see asylum seekers who arrive by boat sent to the country for processing and successful applicants resettled there. The Rudd government has also flagged that the model could be applied to other countries in the region.

''This was done to solve a domestic political problem and for short-term political gain without proper consideration of the long-term consequences,'' Mr Kubuabola said.

''This deal and those mooted with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu clearly threatens our interests by altering the fundamental social fabric of any ... country that accepts a deal with Australia.''

Now, this s a bit rich coming from Fiji. Fiji has been having coup d'etats every decade since the 1980s because every time they hold elections, the naturalised Indian population's vote outnumbers the indigenous Melanesian/Fijian vote. The point being, the Military-led Fijian governments are quite the xenophobic racists themselves because the sole point of these coups has been to oust democratically elected governments.

Let's also not forget that Fiji, like most nations on this planet is decidedly not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees, meaning they are currently not likely to take anybody seeking asylum.

So now, they're turning around and saying to Australia, they don't want Australia to send Asylum seekers to PNG because it is going to disturb a kind pan-Melanesian polity by introducing non-Melanesians. There is no other conclusion to draw but that the Fijian government is xenophobic and not really understanding the issue at all. They'd have a bit more credibility in their complaint if they actually were signatories and took asylum seekers.

I'm okay with just about anybody in the region criticising the 'PNG solution', but it's really hard to take Fiji's complaints seriously.

Will They Really Ban A-Rod For Life?

I haven't written much about baseball and the Yankees and what have you for a while, but the ugly business of steroids keeps on coming back to haunt us all. now it is this Biogenesis thing which has squarely framed up A-Rod for a big suspension and possibly even a lifetime ban.

Bud Selig was at the Hall of Fame ceremonies in Cooperstown this week and was said still to be mulling what punishment to deliver Rodriguez. It is conceivable he could ask for permanent banishment, akin to Pete Rose. But the belief is no matter the level of evidence — and it has been portrayed that MLB has substantially more evidence on Rodriguez than it does on Braun — it would be hard to convince an arbitrator, if Rodriguez appeals, that Rodriguez’s first suspension should be for life.

Keep in mind, though, that Selig could ask for life knowing the arbitrator could lower the punishment to a shorter duration — or even find that Rodriguez should not be punished at all.

But as a way to levy a sanction that will not be reduced, there was growing belief around baseball that Selig would request the rest of this season and all of next year.

That could be viewed as just about the death penalty for Rodriguez, at least for his playing career. He turned 38 yesterday. He has yet to play this year. The idea that he would not play this season or next season and come back able to play in 2015 after two hip surgeries seems farfetched.

It's a messy business. None of this is endearing baseball as a game to the IOC to let it back in, but that is a minor point. This A-Rod and PEDs business just keeps ripping the side out of the reputation of the game itself. All of these kinds of revelations and arguing suspensions in various sports across the last two decades have exhausted my tolerance and patience for the topic itself. At this point it wouldn't surprise me that anybody was on PEDs. I don't trust any of it on one side, and I've learned not to care that sometimes the champions are chemically enhanced. There's nothing you can do to unscramble the egg.

 

Lance On Oprah

The Confessional Interview

By now, everybody knows Lance Armstrong 'fessed up to his 'roiding ways. All bets are on for a flurry of court cases from people chasing their money and dignity. Still, you sort of wonder how the sport stayed so blind for so long.

As I pointed out before, even if they take away his bronze medal from Sydney 2000 and strip him of his 7 Tour de France titles, you're left with the accomplishment itself; and God only knows who else was doing what for their placings in all those races. There's simply no undoing this mess.

Although in the bright light of retrospection given his confession, it seems mightily obvious that something was very awry with the sport of cycling if somebody won the Tour 7 times. A cycling athlete once told me that cyclists could be broken into two rough groups: Short guys with lots of torque leading the way through the mountainous terrain and tall guys pumping their way ahead on the flat plains. There really isn't a cyclist who is at once both tall and short, so it is hard for a cyclist to be dominant over the field - unlike say the way Pete Sampras or Roger Federer towered over their field. The athlete said that it was highly unlikely the same competitor won 2 Tours, let alone twice in a row.

And here we had an individual winning it a record seven times. Even if they strip him of his wins, nobody is ever going to win as many as seven tours without some kind of help. It's just that kind of sport and that kind of race. So they can strip Armstrong of these honours, but over time I think the seven abandoned results are going to mean something totally different, for, unlike Ben Johnson's tainted 100m sprint record from Seoul 1988, nobody 'doing it fair' is going to go past 7 wins let alone come close.

And there it would sit, in everybody's consciousness that one time, a man with the help of medical science was able to accomplish the impossible. We may berate him for being a cheat today, but we may well come to a different understanding at some point in the future.

News That's Fit To Punt 23/04/2010

In Brief...

Olympic 400m champion LaShawn Merritt tested positive for anabolic steroids found in his over the counter penis enlargement product.

Merritt, who is also the world champion at 400 metres, said in a statement via his lawyer that he was "deeply sorry" at failing three doping controls for the banned substance dehydroepiandrosterone.

The 23-year-old American, who faces a two-year ban, said: "To know that I've tested positive as a result of a product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around.

Very unfortunate turn of phrase there...

ETS Fight Is Back On

So says K-Rudd.

KEVIN RUDD says the great moral challenge posed by climate change is undiminished and he will keep trying to implement an emissions trading scheme if Labor is re-elected.

In an interview with the Herald, Mr Rudd rejected growing criticism that he had abandoned the climate change cause because it was no longer a vote winner after the Copenhagen conference and the defeat of his emissions trading scheme.

"It's very clear cut that whether climate change is topical or not, whether it is popular or not, the reality of it does not disappear," he said.

"This remains a fundamental economic, environmental and moral challenge. Whether it's newsworthy or not in a particular season is beside the point. We haven't changed our view of this.''

The Senate has twice blocked legislation for the emissions trading scheme. The legislation is again before the Parliament but the Senate has delayed debate until at least next month and there is next to no chance there will be a vote before the election expected in the spring.

Mr Rudd said that if he is re-elected, he will try again to have a scheme introduced but it would depend on the make-up of the Senate.

''We've got to ensure that we act on climate change and we do so always within the scope of our powers. We maintain our position that this is part of the most efficient and most effective means by which we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the least cost to the economy.''

Well it's good to hear he still has the appetite for putting a price on carbon. There I was thinking that maybe there were secret briefings that told him an Ice Age was coming anyway and made all global warming redundant or something, but clearly that's not the case.

It's nice to know it's on the agenda-radar again.

The Health Deal We Had To Have

A cool article from Peter Hartcher here.

Once the NSW Premier had landed in Canberra on Sunday, Rudd zeroed in on her as his first target. He assessed Kristina Keneally as the most likely of the three recalcitrants to yield because the NSW Government was in the weakest political position of the three, facing an election it's likely to lose, and was the one most in need of a deal to deliver more hospital funds.

Under the offer already on the table, NSW stood to gain an extra $964 million in upfront Commonwealth health money over four years.

Before going to the dinner that Rudd was to host for all the premiers and their treasurers that night, the Prime Minister sweetened the offer to NSW by hundreds of millions of dollars and asked Keneally to commit immediately.

Keneally was not as desperate as Rudd had hoped, however. She refused to commit and said she needed time to think about it.

Just before all the premiers and treasurers were due to arrive at The Lodge for dinner, the treasurers' invitation was cancelled. They were told that they would be dining separately at the Hyatt Hotel, with the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, as their host. The state treasurers were unimpressed when they were led into a small, windowless dining room next to the hotel cafe. They were even less impressed when they tried to discuss key issues with Swan and he rebuffed them.

The state treasurers also asked Swan about the forthcoming Henry review of the tax system. ''No one will be worse off,'' Swan told them, and otherwise wouldn't tell them a thing, not even the date of its release. ''It'll come when it comes,'' he said.

To round out the experience the states again went at each other about the health deal, with John Lenders and NSW's Eric Roozendaal defending their decision to reject the Rudd plan.

The state ministers concluded that Swan had been sent to ''mind'' them so that Rudd could corral the premiers and try to win them over. It didn't work.

That evening the state delegations heard unofficially that Rudd intended to hold them for a day longer than they had planned, into Tuesday.

The blow by blow of how these people staggered to the finish line is very interesting. Kristina Kenneally is still a stinking mess of a premier and really, this does not raise her from the low estimation in which I hold her; but all the same she did all right to bluff to K-Rudd that "we-was-not-so-desperate-yeah?"

David Ortiz Was On PEDs In 2003

What Am I Supposed To Feel? Good?

Since the A-Rod thing in spring, we've seen Many Ramirez suspended for testing positive to PEDs, and now we find that he along with David Ortiz were two of the 103 names on the list of players who tested positive to random tests in 2003.

Remember how they were supposed to be confidential? A-Rod found out otherwise. Now the leaked names are Ramirez and Ortiz. What's slightly (and I do mean ever so slightly) interesting about the revelation is that if one team seemed mostly spared by the steroid allegations of the Mitchell Report, it was the Red Sox. Of course, Yankee fans copped the brunt of the steroid circus as Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez all had to weather the allegations. Of the four, three have come out (for want of a better expression) and admitted the use, while Clemens remains defiant in his denial.

If you're a regular reader, you know I've made peace with the steroid era. However, in burying that era, it's rankled that Red Sox fans have been on their little moral high horse for some time about the Yankees' players who got busted. In this light, it's nice to see that, no, the Red Sox were not magically exempt from the steroid era - indeed they were net beneficiaries as much as any other team, if not more. After all, uhh, count their rings this decade.

Unlike with A-Rod who had to have a terrible press conference this year, it doesn't seem likely David Ortiz is going to have one. It seems unfair, but that is the difference between being the first and the second in having your name leaked from a confidential list.

Jose Canseco as per usual has said he's not the least bit surprised.

Jose Canseco, whose 2005 book arguably started the cascade of revelations and an investigation into the performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, barely raised an eyebrow when he was told David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are reportedly on the list of 104 players who tested positive in 2003.

“When you tell me something I didn’t already know, I’ll be surprised,’’ Canseco told ESPN. “And I’ll tell you this, Major League Baseball is going to have a big, big problem on their hands when they find out they have a Hall of Famer who’s used.”

When asked to name who that Hall of Fame player is, Canseco refused to divulge who he believes it is.

“It’s not about naming names,’’ he said. “I’ve never had anything against the players. It’s always been against Major League Baseball. I know who’s on that list, but like I said, it’s not about attacking the players. It’s about the machine that allowed this to happen. What I speak out of my mouth is the truth. It burns like fire. Just remember, I have never lied about this subject.”

..."If you were in the game in the last 20 years, there’s a 95 percent chance you were knowingly using something,’’ Canseco said. “I said 80 percent back then because that was the number of players that I knew were on. But that number was greater.’’

Great.

In any case, it's been a day of reckoning for Red Sox fans. Watching them try to talk their way around it is a bit embarrassing in as much as there were Yankee fans who tried to do the same. They'll eventually have to come to the same conclusion that we were all a party to it.

It doesn't make me feel any better in the sense that the other 100 names are still hidden and until they actually release those names, then there's going to be this on-going drip effect. And even if they did release it, it's grossly unfair to the players in that the test results were confidential at a time when PEDs weren't banned, and we're clearly judging the past from a different standard that was applied back then.

Then, it's also been unfair to A-Rod. But then we're used to the media double-standard there. In any case, the Schadenfreude is nowhere near as good as hoped - I don't hate Manny or Ortiz. I just like seeing Red Sox fans suffer, but all this is just not the same as making them sit out October.

Roger Clemens' Denial

What To Make Of This?

He really sounds like he means it when he says he never did it. Either he's got extremely selective memory where he's totally blocked out the fact that he did do it. I don't think I've ever heard somebody have such conviction in their denial, but we all think he's a liar on this subject, right?

The seven-time Cy Young Award winner also continued to deny that he was given steroids and human growth hormone by his former personal trainer Brian McNamee, saying it was "impossible" that drug paraphernalia supplied to federal prosecutors by McNamee has his DNA on it.

Clemens also said he still considers former teammate Andy Pettitte a friend, though he also held firm to his assertion that Pettitte "misremembers" a conversation in which Pettitte said they discussed performance-enhancing drugs.

"It's piling on, it's hurtful at times," Clemens said of the allegations that have been made against him. "I'm trying to move on."

Clemens, who is under a federal grand jury investigation for perjury following his testimony before Congress, said he decided to end his silence and react to the book because he plans to leave his Texas home for a week's vacation.

"I was informed this book was coming out and thought we ought to talk about it," Clemens told "Mike and Mike in the Morning." "It's important for me to do that."

What a mess. I have no rational reason to believe he didn't do it, and I have no rational reason to believe he did do it. It's all circumstantial or bordering on hearsay, the accusations that are being made are simply staggering, and we just get to sit there and condemn the man in a kangaroo court of public opinion. It's even worse than A-Rod in the sense that Clemens' denial itself has become a some thing to ridicule - just as much as A-Rod' apologies on admission. They can't win. You can't win. The press can't win. The courts can't win. Nobody wins. What a friggin' mess!

Athletes As Role Models

Matthew Johns, Group Sex Enthusiast

It's coming to light that Rugby League celebrity Matthew Johns participated in a bit of group sex with the lads. He's apologised for 'it' though it is unclear what bit exactly for which he is apologising.

ONE of rugby league's famous faces and a much loved personality, Matthew Johns, is horrified that old claims of sexual misconduct in New Zealand made when he was playing for the Cronulla Sharks have been publicly revisited by the woman involved.

"I am very sorry for all the trauma and embarrassment this has caused for everyone, but particularly for my family," said Johns about the public outing of his involvement.

Channel Nine, which employs Johns as a rugby league expert, last night went public with his response to the yet-to-be aired allegations about footballers and group sex scheduled for Monday night's Four Corners on ABC1.

Johns says he had consensual sex with the woman seven years ago and he was upset, particularly for his children, that the woman was making the claims again.

At the time it was known that three Sharks players were allegedly involved in the incident after a preseason game in Christchurch. None of the players was named publicly.

But privately Johns had spoken to his wife Trish about the incident. Last night Johns fronted his usual Thursday night television program, The Footy Show, and spoke emotionally about the drama. "It put my family through enormous anguish and embarrassment and once again for that I can't say I'm sorry enough … there has been a lot of pain and embarrassment to a lot of people."

Awesome! Sweet!

What kind of man has Group Sex? In a day and age where we say, "not that there's anything wrong about that!" about gay sex, we sort of have to ask this question in order to get a sense of what the social norms might be pertaining to this heterosexual activity of group sex by football players. And it has to be said, it is kind of weird to want to have group sex as portrayed by these articles. I'm not sure I would want my team mates watching me shag a girl in a hotel room, and then watch them do the same girl. If I were more poignant, I might point out that I'd rather not have 'sloppy seconds' either; so this whole group sex thing has got to be a sub-cultural phenomenon of League players, right?

Then there's the question of consent in such a context. How do you get consent for something like this? How does a girl find herself consenting to this sort of thing with a group of footballers? I don't mean to blame the victim here, but it does strain credulity for Johns to say it was all consensual. I mean, did they pass minutes around and counter sign it before hey all joined in the orgy? how the hell does this all work?

Maybe I'm a little squeamish. Then again, I'm pretty squeamish about gay sex as well so I'm in the crowd that says "not that there's anything wrong with that!" with a great deal of irony.   Y'know, there just might be something *wrong* about it on my own personal level.

Didn't Seinfeld joke about this sort of thing? I think he said that if one joins in the 'orgy crowd', one must change friends, clothes and everything else, and then grow a mustache. Perhaps that is what that Reg Regan's mustache is all about?

Meanwhile Manny Gets Done


Turns out Manny Ramirez too was on PEDs. He was on Gonadotropin, which he claims was for a sexual dysfunction, but is something that raises the level of Testosterone. Great.

Manny Ramirez is always going to have this 50-game bust for performance-enhancing drugs hanging over him, no matter what he says, no matter whether he comes back strong in July, no matter that he says he tested clean 15 times in the past five years.

With his suspension on Thursday, Ramirez joins Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and ultimately Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada on the mental list of players who were dirty, or probably dirty.

Ramirez and his helpers can issue all the statements they want about his having been given a drug for a personal health issue and that it turned out to be illegal under current baseball rules, so he must technically take the blame. That is just not going to work.

Too many of us are beyond the giddy time when we could say, poor feller, he should have checked the label on the teabag while he was having a cuppa with the queen. They are responsible. They know that. Athletes spend much of their waking hours not just studying their opponents’ moves but also accumulating information on what will make them bigger, stronger, faster. These people could pass a pharmacologist examination.

It's quicker to count up the guys who have 300+ HRs that likely aren't on PEDs now. The currelynt untainted list starts at Ken Griffey, Jim Thome, Carlos Delgado, Chipper Jones, Vlad Guerrero, Jim Edmonds. Of this list,  I feel less confident about Thome, Guerrero, and Edmonds, but I have no proof whatsoever. Count me a Ken Griffey Jr. and Chipper Jones fan for them to make the Hall - until proven guilty, as we're finding out.

Just to recap for us, here's Jayson Stark:

We'd all love to believe that Manny's intent, in taking this drug, was pure and well-intentioned. We'd all love to believe that his "personal health issue" was serious enough to require unorthodox treatment that isn't even approved by the FDA.But face it, friends, if all the reporting is accurate, that would take the sort of leap of faith only Robbie Knievel ought to attempt.

We also need to recognize something important about baseball's testing program: Its intent is not to catch innocent people who are using run-of-the-mill prescription medications because of pesky "personal health issues."

Basically, the list of substances that can get you flagged fall into three categories:

1. Stuff you'd use to cheat.

2. Stuff you'd use to push the envelope as far as possible in the hope of legally enhancing performance.

3. Stuff you'd use to treat a condition that falls under baseball's limited list of "Therapeutic Medical Exemptions," such as ADD.

But there are no indications that either Manny or his doctors ever contacted the union or MLB seeking any type of Therapeutic Medical Exemption. So there goes that potential for an innocent mistake. And if that's out, what does that leave?

He was using whatever he was using to enhance performance. That's what.

And the rest of the world's response is hand-wringing and rhetoric. I've come to terms with the PED-infested era in my own way. I just look at it as one big load of PR turkey that has come back to roost. We were all doomed the moment we bought into the significance of numbers. They're just numbers.

In case you want to see a columnist do a mental somersault just to cope, here's Bill Simmons. Welcome to the world of Yankee fans, Red Sox fans. It truly sucks.

Enhancing A-Rod

The Olympic Ideal of Performance

I was walking on a flat paved road a couple of days ago, pondering how a flat track pavement would have been a bit of a marvel to a caveman. Maybe it was a marvel even to a human being in the ancient world. You see, I walk across an uneven lawn park to get to the stretch of pavement that leads me to the place where I get lunch. So the difference is noticeable when it goes from the uneven grass in the park to the pavement.

I thought to myself that one could imagine that the ancient olympics might have started this way; that some guys boasting about how fast they ran or how far they could throw stuff, so they decided to create a neutral ground to eliminate the discrepancies of uneven grounds and came up with a flat track. And on this extremely artificial phenomenon of a flat track, they would standardise the conditions for the contestants and let them run.

Nobody really knows how the Ancient Olympics started in the ancient world, but you'd have to figure it had to be about settling who gets the bragging rights as fastest man over 100 cubits or whatever. The point is that the notion of fairness goes hand in hand with the notion of standardised conditions.

All the same, we compare records across time. When somebody breaks a record, it is often in slightly different conditions to when the previous record was set. For instance, in the modern Olympics have been getting tracks that are 'faster' then the older tracks. Swimming pools have bee built so as to remove adverse waves, which in turn produce faster results. Modern shoes have been engineered to better specifications than say those of Emil Zatopek. Do we dare even go into the engineering and technologies that go into regattas and bicycle riding?

In all of these cases, what nobody is saying out loud is that technology is helping the athlete more than for which the media or punters give credit. Nobody really questions the records that get broken by historically newer athletes, with better equipment, even though it seems mightily unfair to compare these numbers. After all, we'll never know what Dawn Fraser would have been able to do in the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre's pool at her peak. Clearly technology is playing a part in all these accomplishments.

Which of course then brings us to PEDs, notably those used by the East Germans in the 1970s. Some of the records set then have taken a long time to break precisely because it has taken that long for the other technologies to compensate for the absence of the biochemical technology used by the East Germans way back when. Yes, it was grossly unfair that the East Germans were using them and the other athletes were not. Yet it seems to me today that the basis for this 'fairness' which creates the moral outrage is actually not quite as cut and dry as WADA and the IOC and the other anti-doping agencies make out.

For instance, Shane Warne underwent a year of being banned from the Cricket because he took a banned diuretic (to look better). It was doubtful he took it to enhance his performance, but he was banned on principle. We won't go into the fact that this is in stark contrast to Murali who regularly gets pinged for his dodgy action, or the unlikelihood of the diuretic assisting Warnie in getting wickets. The logical corollary of banning Shane Warne is that anybody who is a leggie bowling for the weekend club is going to have their performance enhanced. Not many people buy this corollary to be likely.

The point is that the benefit of the biochemical technology may not be as significant as people give it credit, while other technologies in sport are influencing the outcome to a degree that it might not just be the flat-track that people still believe it to be. As far as I know, nobody has been able to quantify just how much drugs are in sport, and yet any time a name gets linked to it, we turn it into a witch hunt, demonising the person.

Let's face it, games like cricket and baseball have actually been less influenced by technological agencies as say, even tennis or squash with their new-fangled racquets, or for that matter swimming.  I mean, yes, PEDs in swimming might be a bigger problem than in cricket, but nobody talks about those pools and the borderline-buoyant swimming costumes.

Which brings me I guess to A-Rod. When I look at A-Rod's accomplishments, I can't imagine I could do what he has done even with PEDs. It's not just guess work, it's probably a statistical likelihood that had I taken gobs of PEDs since my teenage years, I still wouldn't have ended up playing baseball professionally, let alone reached the pinnacle of performance as he has. Seriously folks, I wanted to be the slugging 3B for the Yankees and be their franchise player but it sure wasn't to be! :)

That would be because I have insufficient talent, as in I suck; And I didn't try at all once I realised I sucked. Steroids and their ilk alone would not have carried me there.

Given that it does takes more than just getting injections of weird steroidal chemicals to get to where he has got, I think it's time to actually give some credit back to the effects of true talent and hard work. Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens and Mark Magwire  are/were all amazingly talented dudes who made sacrifices to do what they did. We're over-rating the effects of Performance Enhancing Drugs every time we subscribe to the witch hunt.

Say It Ain't So - Redux

Okay, I Admit It, I Stayed Up Late To Watch The Grilling

So I watched the statement on video, and I watched the other bits of the Q&A. A-Rod really does himself no favors. He's a terrible interviewee in that he looks evasive all the time. It makes it hard for anybody not to lend the basic charity of understanding to his statement. Instead it provokes more questions than answers, and frankly, do we want more dodgy answers to what is already a dodgy situation? I think I've had my fill.

For A-Rod's part, we have to concede a few things to him. He's given the most outspoken admission in Baseball apart from Jose Canseco. He's come cleaner than McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro, Clemens, and even Pettitte and Giambi. Asking for more detail is a little unfair given that he was outed through the inaction/incompetence/faith-breaking of the MLB and MLBPA combined, and the US government that subpoenaed those results.And it's only because some body leaked them that we're all here saying "say it ain't so A-Rod and where's your fucking mea culpa?"

That's right: Let's not forget that the public was not to be privy to this information from 2003, and now that it is, we're collectively making A-Rod pay for all those 104 names. It's way too rich for the press to claim some kind of high ground as it accuses A-Rod of being evasive. And those 103 other guys sure are getting off lightly. They need to send A-Rod a very big Christmas hamper for taking ALL the heat.

As for the Yankees, they seem to be getting very tired of these PED-admissions-biennale. Giambi's "sorry, but I can't admit to what I did" thing was one thing; Pettitte saying, "yes I did, but only once' was another; now with A-Rod saying "I was young, naive and stupid, I wish I'd gone to college where they teach you this stuff" routine must have had the Yankee brass' collective stomachs churning. I like how Cashman said he liked it when A-Rod emphasised the 'stupid' part more than the 'young' part. Indeed, good sir.

Many people give Brian Cashman a hard time for being the GM of the team with the highest pay-roll, as if he's got some wasy, cushy job; but it's in these moments that I think he's gold. He sure doesn't sugar-coat things. If having to organise these horrible moments for the press with a marquee, mics, PA, etc. every couple of years, front up and keep a straight face when you want to chew the players' heads off for their stupidity... I think it would be tough. Really. You have to take your hat off to the man.

Phil Pepe sasy it's a different kind of Bronx Zoo now, but it's  a Zoo all the same. I tend to agree with that easy summation too. I think about those guys now and it seems a world away. I mean, imagine if it turned out Reggie Jackson was on steroids when he hit those 3 homers in that World Series game in 1977? This is a little bit like that hypothetical. Pardon the jokey pun, but this is the Bronx Zoo on steroids. :)

If one had 10 lifetimes, in one of them I think we'd all like to have been an elite athlete. I would've loved to have been the slugging 3B for the Yankees. I wanted to be like Graig Nettles, y'know? Crack some homers, crack some funnies at the journos. He was the man!

When the current guy filling the job description turns out to be a media-circus scandal-sheet-headline and bad-PR rolled into one entity, you wonder how such an endowed human being who is living  dream, turn his dream into such a nightmare? I mean, how do you fuck up something so good, so right royally A-Rod?

*Ugh*. But today is another day. The players are filling into spring training. There are sounds of balls being hit. The guys who got signed look good, the injured guys from last year look fresh, the guys looking to make the team look keen and pretty soon it will be the regular season!

What do the Yankees have going? They have a lineup that has A-Rod and Tex in the heart. It might be the best combo since Mantle-Maris. You'd think this thing has got to score a lot of runs. I hope they kill the league pitching. I really do - as I do every year.

A-Rod Apologia Part 25,701,932,947,462,514,234

Groan

A-Rod has his big press conference today. It's pretty grim. He says evil cousin Kevin gave him the drugs and he took it unquestioningly. We're all having our credulity stretched to breaking point, but that was the gist of it. It's so stupid that it creates more questions than it solves. Considering he had a bunch of people advising him how to handle this press conference, it looks like it was a bit of a stinker.

This is A-Rod's Statement.

Here's the NYT's take from Tyler Kepner.

Rodriguez began the news conference by reading a prepared statement and took questions for about 30 minutes. He paused for 38 seconds near the start when he tried to address his teammates, from stars like Derek Jeter to rookies like Phil Coke. “Thank you,” Rodriguez finally said.

“I saw tears in his eyes,” said Manager Joe Girardi, who sat at a table with General Manager Brian Cashman and Rodriguez. “I thought he was disappointed that it’s come to this. For him to look over and see his teammates, he was moved. I think he really felt like they were part of his family.”

The Yankees are tied to Rodriguez through 2017, after signing him to a 10-year, $275 million contract in December 2007, when Hank Steinbrenner was more visible atop the organization. (Steinbrenner attended the news conference but his brother, Hal, did not.) Rodriguez has stressed that he has been clean since joining the Yankees in 2004, and said he had never taken human growth hormone.

He did admit to using an over-the-counter supplement called Ripped Fuel when he played for the Seattle Mariners, his team from 1994 through 2000. Ripped Fuel contained the substance ephedra, which increases energy and burns fat.

In 2003, Steve Bechler, a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, died after he had been using ephedra. The federal government banned the over-the-counter sale of ephedra in 2004. Major League Baseball added it to its list of banned drugs in 2005 and began testing for it a year later, along with other stimulants.

It is not clear what substance Rodriguez was referring to when he said that he had used the drug “known on the streets as boli or bollee.” Rodriguez said his cousin bought the drug legally in the Dominican Republic.

What can you say? Cousin Kevin who straps Tommy to a chair injected him with steroids? Here's a blog entry from Peter Abraham about how Brian Cashman was handling this situation.

Then we have Brian Cashman, who clearly would like to find a Wayback Machine, go back to 2007 and get rid of his third baseman.
Here is what Cashman said when asked about A-Rod saying he was young and stupid:
“Those are the facts he gave you, it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. I like the fact more that he was stupid rather than young or naïve. It was a bad decision that may cost him on so many levels.”
Then there was this:
“We’ve invested in him as an asset. And because of that, this is an asset that is going through a crisis. So we’ll do everything we can to protect that asset and support that asset and try to salvage that asset.”
An asset? Brrrrrr.

Yeah that would be right. I imagine Brian Cashman feels a deep betrayal, and it's goin to take one heck of a MVP season from A-Rod to get himself out of Cashman's doghouse.
I also want to link to this piece which kind of gives you insight on how gormless Bud Selig has been about this issue.

In a lengthy telephone interview Monday, the commissioner of baseball strongly disputed the widely held perception that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in major-league baseball during the past 15 years.

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it,'' Selig said. "That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.''

Selig pointed to the reduction in the number of positive steroid tests among major- and minor-league players during the past three years, as well as the institution of amphetamine testing as evidence that baseball's 2005 drug policy is working.

He also defended his efforts to stop the use of performance-enhancing drugs as far back as 1999, the year after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, two now-suspected steroid cheats, staged a seasonlong home run derby that helped pull baseball out of the tailspin it went into after the work stoppage of 1994.

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently,'' Selig said. "A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made.''

Selig said he pushed for a more stringent drug policy during the labor negotiations of 2002 but ultimately settled for a watered-down version out of fear that the players association would force another work stoppage.

"Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,'' Selig said. "Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way."

It's a bit like a guy arriving late by train claiming the train broke down, but he jogged in the direction of the destination while the cariage was being fixed. This is the same Baseball Commissioner's office that had Kennesaw Mountain Landis unilaterally ban the Black Sox back in the day.

Why didn't Bud get tougher? Why did he wait all those years before he gently nudged the subject towards the Union? It wasn't as if the warning signs weren't there. It should have been one of the non-negotiables. When the premier slugger on the premier team gets busted for steroids, it's a little late, don't you think? The Yankees are having to wear a lot of the Steroid smear thanks to the players it signed on the basis of their steroid fueled performances. If I were Hank and Hal, I'd be a little pissed off about how Bud's timidity in tackling the issue ended up as the Yankees' PR nightmare.

As a guy who roots for the laundry, this is just all too alienating. It also brought this question to mind: If a model inflates her boobs and ends up on the Sports Illustrated calendar, does anybody cry foul for her performance getting enhanced?

It's professional sports. It's not amateur sports or the Olympics. The records are all tainted, so those don't matter. Maybe we're all barking up the wrong tree? Maybe what needs to happen is a way in which PEDs are administered rationally and reasonably to help Pro athletes perform with PEDs without coming to harm?

Jose Canseco is now vindicated. He wants an apology.

Jose Canseco believes he was the only player telling the whole truth about steroids. Who used and when. For how long.
He was called a liar and a huckster for admitting in two books he juiced for nearly the entire length of a 462 home run career and describing how he injected teammates with illegal anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.
Now that players he named in his tell-all memoirs, like Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro, have admitted using performance-enhancing drugs or flunked drug tests, Canseco wants an apology from baseball for treating him as an outcast.
"It's time for somebody in baseball to say to Jose Canseco, 'We're sorry you got treated the way you did,"' said Canseco's attorney, Dennis Holahan.
The former Bash Brother wants more than forgiveness from baseball. He wants to educate the sport, too. Canseco offered to help baseball move on from the steroid era and end the use of banned substances with education about the dangers of drugs, starting at the high school level.
Holahan sent a letter last week to union head Donald Fehr and Gene Orza, the union's chief operating officer, offering the former slugger's assistance.
Holahan's letter explained how Canseco regretted writing his 2005 book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," and wanted to restore his "good name."
"Nevertheless, after being vilified and labelled an informant and a liar, all allegations, in both of his books, have now been proven to be truthful, including the recent news about Alex Rodriguez," Holahan said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press.
Holahan held a conference call on Friday with two union lawyers, including Steve Fehr, and spoke again with Fehr on Tuesday to discuss the letter.
"We want some kind of joint response to the situation and some plan to move forward where Jose is included, instead of excluded," Holahan said Tuesday night.

Frankly, I don't blame him. If Bonds was allowed to hit his home runs on PEDs and everybody turned a blind eye, and Canseco had to limp away with 36 homers to go for 500, just because he was vocal and open about steroids, the man deserves an apology from somebody. It wasn't like he couldn't play any more at that point. They, as in the owners and front offices shunned him to put a lid on the steroid talk, hoping he would go away. Clearly, they betted wrong.

What a fucking mess.

I found this on BTF. The original's been edited back, but it's worth grabbing the full quote.

Group mentalities are easy. Too easy. We’re the Yankees, we all wear the same uniform, we all have one goal, we all will man up and support our guy. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s the same blather you hear from high school football coaches; from college basketball coaches; hell, from Klan leaders and gang leaders. We are one. We stand together. Be a man. Fight the power.

Bulls$%#.

Being a man (which, for the record, is one of the dumbest phrases ever; is “being a man” different than “being a woman?” Are we tougher, stronger, more courageous than women? Hardly) means having guts to go against the uniform and the expected behavior. Of course the Yankees are going to stand behind Rodriguez—because 95% of these boobs have never taken a stand in their lives. The foundation of their existences centers around repetition and precision; doing as told and being robotic in response and output. That, more than anything, is why I’d rather my daughter and son become bowling shoe cleaners than pro athletes. I want them to be blessed with conviction and decency, not mindless adherence.

So, New York Yankee players, line up behind a man who cheated; who lied; who shamed the game. Line up behind someone who has shown you and your profession no respect.

Line up behind him—because he would line up behind you.

Totally agreed. It shits me quite a bit that the Yankees are trotting out their star players to 'support' A-Rod. Support him for what exactly? To hold his hand through this tough time, having cheated and totally fucked up the public trust for the game, the franchise and any respect somebody might have had for the rest of them? This reflects badly on EVERYBODY - the players, the owners, the front offices, the coaches, the MLB, the MLBPA, the agents, the journalists who covered them and the fans. Yeah, us, the fans.

I want to close off with this photo of the guys from Peter Abraham's blog:



Interesting expressions on the dynasty four, huh? Mo, Andy, Derek and Jorge. Imagine what they're really thinking.

So Jose Canseco Says...

He Just Wants To Help

The original steroid monkey who got himself unwelcome to all the major league clubhouses because of his steroid-proselytising, now says he wants to help MLB.

“I think I have the ear of the nation now,” Canseco said Tuesday. “I think everyone realizes I have not in any way, shape or form tried to create smoke and mirrors like Major League Baseball has and the players have. I have been excruciatingly honest about what’s going on in baseball.”

Canseco’s attorney, Dennis Holahan, said he was sending a letter to Fehr and Gene Orza, the union’s chief operating officer, offering the former slugger’s assistance. Canseco, who has admitted using steroids, offered few specifics about what he planned to discuss in his proposed joint meeting, other than he was concerned about the “welfare of baseball.”

“The goal is to come up with a plan to rid baseball of steroids once and for all,” Holahan said.

In Canseco’s 2005 book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big,” Canseco claimed he introduced Oakland Athletics teammate Mark McGwire and other stars to steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. He wrote about injecting himself and McGwire in bathroom stalls, and how the effects of the drugs were the reason he hit 462 career home runs.

In his 2008 book, “Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball,” Canseco said he introduced Alex Rodriguez to a steroids dealer.

Canseco declined comment on Rodriguez’s admission Monday that he used banned substances from 2001-03 while playing for Texas.

Major League Baseball said it was willing to listen to Canseco’s offer.

“Let’s take a look at the letter and see what’s inside the letter. It will be interesting,” MLB spokesman Rich Levin said. “We’d be glad to get correspondence from Mr. Canseco and we’ll deal directly with him.”

People laughed when he wrote his books and claimed even A-Rod was a user. I think people laughed at him because we thought if we derided him hard enough the issue would go away. It hasn't and so far his claims about Clemens and A-Rod has been proven to be correct. Well, Clemens keeps denying, but that wasn't the surprising bit. Who knows if Canseco is simply looking to get paid or because he genuinely wants to help. Maybe the MLB should listen. After all, they're eating humble pie with a side order of Crow pretty hard right now.

More On The 'A-Roid Scandal'

He Admits It Now



In the confusion that followed the allegations, A-Rod seemed to be avoiding a comment, but he came out swinging by admitting to years of use, to Peter Gammons.

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla. An extended interview will air on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. ET.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

"I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."

So I guess that covers that. Dan Szymborski who does the wonderful ZiPS projection system amongst other things has this opinion piece at BTF.

In 2004, Major League Baseball, under the terms of an agreement with the MLBPA, started instituting penalties for players that tested positive for certain drugs that were believed to be drug-enhancing.
25 years before, Major League Baseball also came to terms with the MLBPA on a drug-testing deal, though cocaine was the more worrisome issue in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately, Bowie Kuhn subsequently announced that he was the final authority for anything not specifically outlined in the drug-testing arrangement, forcing the union to opt out of the agreement at their earliest allowed juncture. Future commissioners further muddied the waters, ending any hopes for a new drug-testing agreement, most notably Fay Vincent, who attempted to circumvent the contract agreed to with the MLBPA and then taking the further, reprehensible step of actually threatening Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, and Jack Lawn in order to prevent them from testifying to the arbitrator. There simply was no reason for players to trust the owners at this point.

But are the owners to blame for the various performance-enhancing drugs used in baseball and other sports over the last 50 years? Nope.

Any blame, if there is blame to be distributed, should be pointed directly at how we, the fans, view athletic excellence.

We expect our athletes to be supermen. Hurt your hamstring and have to miss games? You're a slacker and should get back into the game. Torn labrum? Stop being a sissy and bear it, Don Drysdale didn't need no MRI! Stress fracture in your foot? Rub some dirt on it.

For fans, the belief has always been that athletic excellence is something that an athlete should risk everything for. Playing in pain, running into walls, brutal crushing tackles, are the currency of fandom's love and abiding respect.

I think it's a very good piece, largely because it reaffirms my own thinking on this subject which has been growing for some years.Yeah, I know, there's nothing like something that reconfirms your prejudices, except it's not a prejudice. I've been forced to think about this for a long time. Thank you Bud Selig, Donald Fehr and all you muthas who dragged their bleeding heels in the MLB and MLBPA.

One of the more interesting observations I have seen around the traps is that the players have always been the players: members of a competitive, privileged  club, who are always looking for an edge. in other eras there were amphetamines and stimulants. It is just that the ethical standards have changed around them, and they are being exposed for being dinosaurs.

It's not exactly Ben Johnson either because the game didn't ban it, so the guys who did it, did so with a tacit non-disapproval, which amounted to a tacit approval. How weak is that? And as for Ben Johnson (an Tim Montgomery who broke Ben Johnson's number and turned out to be on PEDs too), nobody can take away from him the fact that he ran as fast as he did. Even Carl Lewis who was given the Gold in that race as Johnson was disqualified, turned out to have a PED taint in his career. Nobody can deny Big Mac and Bonds and A-Rod hit those jacks and they went over the fence.

And the people cheered. It was all 'good'. Remember?

I had a conversation with Walk-Off HBP and he said that the abject hypocrisy of the sports media was simply astounding. Because he carried Barry Bonds in a Keeper League for years and years, he read the entire posts to do with Bonds' career in the years he was lauded for hitting the homers, and then reviled for being a steroid user, often by the very same journalists who did the lauding.

In Walk-Off HBP's opinion, it was obvious Bonds and Big mac were ALWAYS abusing steroids, so it was laughable that it when they were being lauded and reprehensibly hypocritical when they were being condemned. Besides which what exactly do steroids do for you in Baseball?

Walk-Off HBP's theory is that being anabolic, they help recovery and therefore allow the athlete to perform at their peak more often than without. Everybody thinks it is about the strength, but that is hardly how it would impact the game, in Walk-Off HBP's opinion.

Steve Goldman has this piece in the Pinstriped Bible.

ESPN has posted a very deceptive bit of statistical analysis. It's a two-column table. It says that in the three seasons that Rodriguez cops to using, 2001 through 2003, he averaged .305, hit .52 home runs, and slugged .615. In the other 10 seasons of his career, he batted .309, hit 39 home runs, and slugged .574. Looks pretty damning -- the guy picked up 13 home runs a year on the juice! However, those statistics are not park or league adjusted. More important than any juice is the fact that Rodriguez went from a difficult home park to a very generous one. In his last year in Seattle, Rodriguez hit .272/.406/.502 at home with 13 home runs in 265 at-bats, but .356/.433/.702 with 28 home runs in 289 at-bats. In 2001, those numbers nearly reversed themselves. He hit .361/.439/.677 at home, .276/.359/.567 on the road. The splits for 2002 and 2003 are very similar.

If you do the necessary adjustments, Rodriguez's offensive production ranks this way (I'm using Equivalent Average as my stat of choice):

1.    2007
2.    2005
3.    2000
4.    1996
5.    2001
6.    2008
7.    2002
8.    2003
9.    2006
10.    1998
11.    2004
12.    1999
13.    1997

The point here is not to let Rodriguez off the hook for juicing, but to have some fairness in our response. If we accept that he has been clean since 2003 -- and I admit that believing any ballplayer about anything is a huge problem right now -- then it is impossible to say that his best work has been the product of any artificial sweeteners.

Yeah, that's a big maybe too, Steve.

The Dude at Audio Darnok mentioned to me he had to take steroids for a week because of a sinus problem. He said during the week he took the steroids, he felt like he was charged up and ready to go all the time. He didn't experience roid rage but he said he felt like he was bouncing with endless energy. He reported that just having it seemed to focus his mind and become superhuman in his ability to stay with tasks. He joked that the music mixes he did that week were definitely "performance enhanced".

I still don't know what to make of all of this. I don't really care about the record books. I don't care about Hall of Fame chances. I don't care about the straight and crooked numbers. Now, I just think the Yankees ought to win and that's that - and for that to happen, A-Rod just has to hit and hit and hit. Yay for the pinstriped laundry.

Oh, and doesn't Derek Jeter come out looking great again, just as every time A-Rod has a moral failure? If it ever came out he was on PEDs, I think I'll have a stroke. :)

A-Rod Was 'A-Roids'

Wouldn't You Know It? Jose Canseco Was Right

Jose Canseco was out to out everybody with his books. One of the big names he claimed was on steroids was A-Rod, and A-Rod in turn shrugged as if to say it was so preposterous it didn't warrant an answer. Now, there are leaks that A-Rod was one of the players who tested positive in 2003, the year MLB commenced anonymous testing.

In 2003, when he won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources have independently told Sports Illustrated.

Rodriguez's name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball's '03 survey testing, SI's sources say. As part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association, the testing was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.

When approached by an SI reporter on Thursday at a gym in Miami, Rodriguez declined to discuss his 2003 test results. "You'll have to talk to the union," said Rodriguez, the Yankees' third baseman since his trade to New York in February 2004. When asked if there was an explanation for his positive test, he said, "I'm not saying anything."

The MLBPA issued a statement on Saturday, saying "Information and documents relating to the results of the 2003 MLB testing program are both confidential and under seal by court orders. We are prohibited from confirming or denying any allegation about the test results of any particular player[s] by the collective bargaining agreement and by court orders. Anyone with knowledge of such documents who discloses their contents may be in violation of those court orders."

Well, that's great because it's out in the open now. Who knows who the other names are, but it's A-Rod that's been hung out to dry. The MLB's labor relations man Rob Manfred released this statement.

"We are disturbed by the allegations contained in the Sports Illustrated news story which was posted online this morning. Because the survey testing that took place in 2003 was intended to be non-disciplinary and anonymous, we can not make any comment on the accuracy of this report as it pertains to the player named.
"Based on the results of the 2003 tests, Major League Baseball was able to institute a mandatory random-testing program with penalties in 2004. Major League Baseball and the Players Association have improved the drug testing program on several occasions so that it is now the toughest program in professional sports. The program bans stimulants, such as amphetamines, as well as steroids.
"Any allegation of tipping that took place under prior iterations of the program is of grave concern to Major League Baseball, as such behavior would constitute a serious breach of our agreement.
"Under Commissioner [Bud] Selig's leadership, Major League Baseball remains fully committed to the elimination of the use of performance enhancing substances from baseball. As the Commissioner has said, we will continue to do everything within our power to eliminate the use of such drugs and to protect the integrity of the program."

Well, that's great too but there's no way to un-fuck this goat. A-Rod's been named and that's that. He's either got to come out swinging with full denial in the face of contrary evidence like Roger Clemens or he has to come clean like Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi. It's just so wonderful that the Yankees keep on having to hold press conferences for guys who essentially cheated to get inflated numbers and went on to collect big money from their payroll. I imagine Brian Cashman is groaning in bed holding a pillow over his head. I wouldn't want to face the coming Monday either.

Even if he comes out and says "I did it, sorry", his projected legacy is going to be tied up with this stuff. Sitting on 553 HRs, he's likely going to leave a big HR total. Now he's going to be in the Barry Bonds/Mark McGwire territory of having big tainted numbers.

My personal take is that I've stopped being angry about the steroid abusers. I can't sustain my fury at the cheats when I know that it was widespread and that the Owners, the MLB and MLBPA turned a blind eye to it for many years. The tacit non-disapproval, and by its own corollary extension, a tacit approval, created the conditions whereby athletes flocked to bulk up or try and gain an edge. If A-Rod was no different, then at least we know, that's what it takes to get a  Shortstop to hit like Lou Gehrig.

Look at that chart closely. The blue squiggle is the average Isolated Power of MLB hitters through all that time starting from 1926. There are ups and downs that correspond to various periods of the game, but the eye-catching thing is how the league average ISO pops over .150 in 1993. That's the year McGwire posts an ISO of .393, at Age 29. Late bloomer, don't you think? His previous high point was .329.

It's obvious in hindsight but that's just what it is: hindsight. Even A-Rod's graph looks 'interesting' in retrospect. He's been posting a flat .300 ISO since 1999 with the exception of 04, 06, 08 as a Yankee. 2003 in particular marked the end of a 5 year run of around .300 ISO. It's incredibly fishy - in hindsight. Is this proof? No. But it should have sounded alarm bells the way, say Bernie Madoff's fund sounded the alarm for Harry Markopolos.

Still, even when McGwire was smashing records and when Bonds was smashing McGwire's records, it seemed abundantly obvious these guys were on something. All of them looked like monsters compared to the sluggers I knew from my childhood. Old images of players like Jim Rice and Reggie Jackson in their peak years look small by comparison to these guys hitting.

As an audience I guess I just learned to turn a blind eye to it. For that I think I'm equally to blame as the athletes, the ownership, the MLB and the journalists. Our collective acceptance of these numbers enabled the athletes to cheat. It's a bummer when you realise that. It's too late to innocently say, "Say it ain't so."

UPDATE:

There was this lovely article in the NYT.

Go ahead. Laugh. Dismiss tarot cards as a mere superstition. But I am a baseball fan. Superstition is my middle name. I have my lucky “Property of New York Yankees” T-shirt that is ripped and faded and belongs in the trash. I have my lucky black Yankees cap that my friend Judith bought for me, the one with the rhinestone-studded NY. I even have my lucky turkey burgers that my husband throws on the grill for dinner whenever I’m panicking during a game, which is always. Who am I to rule out anything?

“Let’s start by asking the cards who you are to the Yankees,” Patricia said as we sat together in her living room, the oversize, brightly colored cards spread out face down on a table.

I slid a card out of the deck and handed it to her.

“Ah, the Time Space card,” she said, nodding. “Apparently, you have a karmic connection with the Yankees. They’re not just a team to you. They’re your destiny.”

Wow. No wonder I spent hours obsessing over whether Joba should start or relieve.

“We signed three high-profile free agents,” I continued. “We paid a lot of money for them, too, so I’d like to find out how they’ll do this year.”

“How much money?” Patricia asked before taking a sip of water.

“Almost half a billion dollars.”

She did a spit-take.

“But they’re great,” I assured her.

“Which one would you like to ask about first?”

“C. C. Sabathia.”

“Then the question is: Who is C. C. to the Yankees this season? Pick a card, Jane.”

I selected one and gave it to her.

“The Fortune card!” she exclaimed, beaming. “He’s going to be very, very successful — definitely their ace in the hole.”

She clearly meant ace of the staff. Holy cow!

The Yankees are going to have an auspicious year in spite of everything.

Rocket Man

Roger Clemens Appears At Hearings

At this point in time, it's getting harder to believe Roger Clemens' claim that he never touched PEDs. One of the weirder things to come out of the Clemens camp was that when he *did* mention HGH to Brian McNamee, it was in relation to his wife getting them for the Sports Illustrated photo-shoot.

Well, I guess if you want to look good, you have to work at it. I have to say she looked pretty good in that shoot, considering she has pushed out 4 younger rockets out into the world. Good for her! It's a weird photo, and knowing about the HGH thing makes it even weirder. Anyway, Clemens' point is that he didn't do it, his wife did. And the dog ate his homework.

A Couple of days ago, Jose "juiced" Canseco came out and said that he never discussed steroids or PEDs with Roger Clemens.

The first mention of Clemens' name in the Mitchell Report is on page 167. On the very next page comes McNamee's account of "a lunch party that Canseco hosted at his home in Miami."

"McNamee stated that, during this luncheon, he observed Clemens, Canseco, and another person he did not know meeting inside Canseco's house, although McNamee did not personally attend that meeting," the Mitchell Report says.

In his affidavit, Canseco said, "I specifically recall that Clemens did not come to the bar-b-que. I remember this because I was disappointed that he did not attend. I later learned that he had a golfing commitment that day and could not attend the party."

Canseco's book about steroids in baseball, "Juiced," drew Congress' attention in 2005, leading to that year's hearing. He and Clemens were teammates on the 1996 Boston Red Sox and 2000 New York Yankees, in addition to the '98 Blue Jays.In his affidavit, the existence of which was first reported by the AP on Saturday, Canseco also disputes other statements of McNamee's in the Mitchell Report. The affidavit also says "neither Senator Mitchell nor anyone working with him" contacted Canseco to attempt to corroborate things McNamee said.

It's a weird endorsement, but it is an affidavit. It's a bit like getting a character endorsement from a heroin junky.

The more this Steroid circus goes on, the more I'm inclined to think I'm participating in a hypocrisy contest - the person who can express the most disapproval wins!. There are some sports where they test the hell out of you, and there are other sports that don't. Every time we find a drug cheat, we get up in arms like he's Ben Johnson. The thing about Ben Johnson is that he did run faster than Carl Lewis, even though he surrendered his gold medal to Lewis. And then it came out years afterwards that Lewis may have been on PEDs too - but by then it was too late to take away his gold medal and give it to the next guy. All the while there's no guarantee the next guy didn't do steroids either.

Then there's the historic problem where MLB and the MLBPA were complicit in letting the steroid problem go unchecked for many years. Even if it weren't intentional, they ended up in a situation where they tacitly condoned it. When most other sports were screaming blue about PEDs, baseball sort of went and celebrated the Festival of the Longball with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. It just doesn't look good to then turn around and haggle about whether Roger Clemens was on PEDs or not or whether that is provable in the US Senate when MLB didn't exactly have rules against PEDs, let alone a testing policy. It's not surprising Dick Pound and the World Anti-Doping Agency managed to kick baseball off the Olympic sport list. baseball had it coming.
But is it fair (within its own crappy confines of non-testing and head-in-the-sand administration of PED regulation) to then turn around and hoist up these people?

On top of all this mess there's the record book. We might expunge Ben Johnson's record but the fact remains he ran 100m in 9.79s. To my knowledge, that mark has not been broken. Tim Montgomery ran it in 9.78 with a 2.0m/s tailwind, but he too was found to have used PEDs. I think Bonds' record stands. The balls went over the fence, the result stands. Ditto anything and everything that happened in the 'Steroids Era'. It's crappy, but the discomfort of living with it should be a reminder to us all that PEDs can ruin your sport in more ways than one.