Category: MLB (Page 375 of 448)

Congress wants to pursue Roger Clemens for perjury because they’re not so sure he told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to a committee two weeks ago.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman and ranking Republican Tom Davis sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, urging more scrutiny of Clemens’ statements in a Feb. 5 sworn deposition and at a Feb. 13 public hearing where he said he “never used anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.”

“That testimony is directly contradicted by the sworn testimony of Brian McNamee, who testified that he personally injected Mr. Clemens with anabolic steroids and human growth hormone,” the congressmen wrote.

“Mr. Clemens’s testimony is also contradicted by the sworn deposition testimony and affidavit submitted to the committee by Andrew Pettitte, a former teammate of Mr. Clemens, whose testimony and affidavit reported that Mr. Clemens had admitted to him in 1999 or 2000 that he had taken human growth hormone,” the letter said.

It’s nice to see that the congressional hearing they had two weeks ago wasn’t for nothing. It was pretty clear that Clemens was ducking questions in effort to clear his name and hopefully if he was lying, Congress will find out.

Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times writes about the potential baggage the Rays would have to deal with if they sign Barry Bonds.

Over the years, the Rays’ clubhouse has been a bad place, an awful place, for a young ballplayer to work. It has been a place where apathy devoured ability, where some veterans scoffed at enthusiasm and effort. Only now has it been scrubbed clean of the sour influences.

So it’s a good idea to thrust the Godzilla of sour influences into the room?

In any discussions – even the informal, internal discussions that teams have about every available free agent – there are a few questions that have to be answered about Bonds.

What would he mean to the clubhouse? Odds are, it wouldn’t be good.

At this point in his career, doesn’t the bad outweigh the good with Barry? For the 25-plus home runs that he’s going to hit, is it worth it to soil the clubhouse? The Giants are going to be awful – maybe the worst in baseball even. But read the articles coming out of San Fran so far in spring training; all the players are ecstatic because they’re not walking on eggshells anymore.

Outfielder Gary Sheffield showed up to Tigers’ spring training Thursday to do the usual. You know, some light jogging, stretching…ripping agent Scott Boras.

Sheffield and Boras have been in dispute for five years, since Sheffield fired Boras in 2003. Sheffield later negotiated his own contract with the New York Yankees, but Boras claimed he should get a portion of that deal because of the work he had done on Sheffield’s behalf. Sheffield had to miss four spring training games last year to deal with the case, and he said he is having to attend to it again this spring.

“It’s probably personal, but when it gets done it’s going to be personal with me,” Sheffield said.
Sheffield won’t mention Boras by name, but he left no doubt who he was talking about when he said this morning that he would tell other players to stay away from the super-agent.

“I’m going to warn everybody,” Sheffield said. “It’s going to be the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. There’s certain people you don’t want to mess with — and I guarantee you I’m one of them.”

Sheffield later said that his dealings with Boras were “total hell,” and he twice referred to the agent as a “bad person.”

Them are fighting words.

Manny “Being Manny” Ramirez said Thursday he wants to finish his career with the Boston Red Sox.

“I want to stay here, but it’s up to them if they want to bring me,” he said. “But if they don’t want to bring me back, that’s fine. I know I’ll be a free agent after ’08 so that’s another thing that I’m looking forward (to).”

The slugging left fielder is in the last year of an eight-year contract. Beyond that, the team has options for the next two seasons at $20 million each.

“It’s up to them to say, ‘OK, we’re going take (the option). It’s not up to me to go into the office and demand a four-year deal, whatever,” the 35-year-old Ramirez said. ” No, I’m going come here to play the game, finish my year. If they want me to come back, I’ll come back.”

Okay, it’s Thursday right? By 5:00pm Friday let’s see if he’s singing the same tune. This guy changes his mind more than Bill Parcells in a contract year.

When discussing baseball’s drug-testing policy Wednesday at Yankees’ spring training camp, third basemen Alex Rodriguez raised some eyebrows after saying he was tested “9 or 10 times” last year.

A-Rod said he understood all of this, and made the point by noting that he was drug-tested “nine or 10 times” last season. It seemed to be his way of putting the situation in context, noting that he had to be clean because of what he called baseball’s “very strict (drug-testing) policy.”

The problem is that apparently no player would be tested that many times in a season unless he had tested positive for amphetamines or otherwise given MLB reason to target him.

A-Rod seems to be the kind of guy who says thinks at times just to hear himself talk. He doesn’t really think before he makes comments and therefore leaves himself open for criticism. If he were to just take a moment to think about what’s coming out of his mouth, I’m willing to bet the media would get off his back.