Tag: MLB steroids (Page 5 of 5)

      Canseco hints that Manny is on the juice

      April 7, 2009 /

      Jose Canseco recently touched on the topic of steroids in baseball to an audience at Bovard Auditorium on the campus of USC and hinted that Dodgers’ outfielder Manny Ramirez could be/could have been on the juice.

      Jose CansecoWhat about Manny Ramirez? someone asks.

      He says this, despite the fact that A-Rod isn’t being treated as toxic, nor are other players who were caught up in the steroid scandal but publicly apologized, including Miguel Tejada, starting shortstop for the Houston Astros, and Andy Pettitte, a starting pitcher with the New York Yankees.

      Why didn’t Ramirez get a long-term deal? Canseco asks. Why were owners gun-shy about signing arguably the game’s best hitter?

      Never mind that Ramirez was asking for a mega-deal at age 36. Or that he was negotiating in a sickly economy, while weighed down by the heavy baggage of a surly reputation. Canseco will have none of it. To Canseco, the drawn-out negotiation, the lack of a long-term deal, the lack of interest all raise red flags, and so he tells the Bovard crowd that Ramirez’s “name is most likely, 90%,” on the list.

      Canseco admits later that he has no way of knowing. But it makes sense to him, so he threw it out there — kaboom! — swinging for the fences, still.

      Late Saturday, I tracked down Ramirez to tell him what Canseco had said. The immediate response is pure Ramirez: He laughs. Sitting at his locker, he says, “I got no comment, nothing to say about that. What can I say? I don’t even know the guy.”

      Canseco is a nut, but as it turns out he’s been right about a lot of the players he has called out for taking roids. But that doesn’t mean Ramirez has ever been on the juice and I don’t know if you can point to his contract troubles this past offseason as an indication that he was taking performance-enhancers. I think teams were more leery of Man-Ram’s age, eroding defensive skills and the possibility of him flat out quitting on the Red Sox last year.

      MLB

      Justice: Tejada only regrets getting caught

      March 27, 2009 /

      Miguel Tejada was sentenced to one year of probation for misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle writes that Tejada only regrets getting caught.

      Nice going, Miggy. Way to represent The Good Guys.

      Incidentally, who decided a $5,000 fine was any way to punish a guy making $13 million? Couldn’t the feds have ordered Tejada to pay whatever the government spent proving he’s a liar?

      Anyway, about eight seconds after Tejada’s plea-bargain agreement was announced, the Astros issued a statement saying how happy they were to have this whole thing behind them.

      In other words, let’s all forget that this guy is a cheat and that we got fleeced on this trade.
      As for Tejada, he hasn’t exactly been forthright. He has confessed to what he got caught doing and nothing more. And there appears to be more there.

      He played the contrite card when he showed up at spring training until someone asked about his use of steroids and HGH.

      He bristled and said he wasn’t going to talk about it. Now that’s coming clean.

      He doesn’t have to admit anything. The Mitchell Report does it for him. It’s right there on page 201 along with photo copies of checks to ex-teammate Adam Piatt for $3,100 and $3,200.
      Piatt said he provided Tejada with steroids and human growth hormone, but he has no way of knowing if Tejada actually used the stuff.

      Unfortunately Justice is right and even more unfortunate is that this is the way it’s going to be when it comes to the steroid era in baseball. The players that used will deny or only own up to what they were caught with. The owners will continue to look the other way and hide under the umbrella that is Bud Selig. And Selig will continue to act like the victim in all of this.

      The players, owners and Selig will continue to ask to move on. And eventually, the fans will probably oblige because we’re not going to stop going to the parks.

      MLB

      Bud Selig is in denial

      February 17, 2009 /

      Bud Selig wants to remind everyone that this whole steroid issue in baseball isn’t his fault.

      Bud Selig“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.”

      “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.”

      Bud Selig the victim – now that’s rich.

      Just like we question how athletes don’t know what form of steroids they took, we should continue to question how Bud the Slug didn’t know that players in his league were using performance-enhancing drugs right under his nose. A parent isn’t going to know about every little thing hiding in their teenager’s room and Selig isn’t going to know about what every player in every clubhouse is taking.

      But to hear him try and spin what has happened over the past decade into a positive is laughable. He knew something was going on, but he waited until the situation grew so big that he couldn’t hide it in his back pocket anymore to say something. Now he wants all of us to look at the progress he and baseball has made since 1998? Come on. He should have squashed this bug from the beginning, but instead he saw that home runs equaled asses in the seats and he took a calculated risk that this issue would never blow up the way it has.

      But Selig does have a point – the blame needs to be spread out. The players union felt that steroid testing was a violation of the privacy of players. They created an unnecessary shit storm by allowing players to essentially take whatever they wanted without fear of punishment. The union tried to protect the prisoners and the prisoners turned around and started running the asylum.

      And where are the owners in all of this? If Selig wasn’t ready to make a better stand at the top, the owners should have done something on the ground floor. But they too were lining their pockets, so they turned a blind eye as well. They also get the luxury of hiding behind Selig as he takes most of the criticism on this issue from the media and fans.

      The fact of the matter is that Bud the Slug, the players, the players union and the owners are all at fault for this. All of them should be held accountable but instead, we get to hear Selig talk about how this wasn’t his fault and how players like A-Rod shamed the game. Please.

      MLB

      Can baseball be fixed?

      February 13, 2009 /

      Of course it can. We have hard evidence that the game has been fixed since the early ‘90s. Crooked players, crooked trainers, crooked owners, crooked general managers, and crooked lawyers have all contributed to turning America’s pastime into a racketeering enterprise. For the last 15 years, baseball fans have watched their game turn into a traveling sideshow. Before our very eyes, we’ve conceded that baseball will have that sort of WWE fantasy – the realization that while what we are watching at times is athletically amazing, it’s not altogether real.

      This week, a video surfaced of WWE wrestler Chris Jericho punching a female fan who was antagonizing him. All this recent hullabaloo got me thinking about the relationship fans have with their favorite athletes. As witnessed in the video, while many attempted to get a picture with Jericho, a few passionately wanted to abuse him. They stupidly believed in a fabricated storyline and sought to attack the main instigator who was ruining their day. Essentially, they cared way too much about something that wasn’t even real.

      Wrestlers are actors who work out, plain and simple. While they do display some degree of athleticism, that’s not why fans pile into the arena. They watch because of the engaging storylines written by failed Hollywood writers. Hey, this amalgam of fiction and sports did it for me as kid. However, other hobbies and becoming familiar with the female gender prevented my relationships with The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Undertaker from continuing. Nevertheless, I always hung on to baseball, even to this day. Unfortunately, I’ve watched my sport evolve into a form of sports entertainment, not unlike the WWE.

      Baseball was the first sport I ever really loved. I played it. I collected the cards. I went to the Dodgers games. I stayed up late to watch Dan Patrick and Chris Berman on “Baseball Tonight.” I really loved it. Even then, I appreciated that I didn’t know anything personal about the players I admired. In my mind, they were all “good guys.” Now that I think about, the reason I was in awe of these athletes was because I was watching them perform things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t hit as far (Frank Thomas), I couldn’t throw as hard (Randy Johnson), and I sure as hell could never make that catch (Ken Griffey). At ten years old, something inside me couldn’t stand that they were better players than I was. What they were doing was real, and there was no way around it.

      macThen it happened. Barry Bonds was accused of taking steroids and the game imploded. I could do what some of these guys were doing – I just needed to cheat. Then there were the Supreme Court hearings and the Mitchell Report. And Jose Canseco? What? Amidst all the two-stepping by those involved, Canseco has appeared to be the only constant source of truth. In doing so, he’s been blackballed from the game and created more enemies than he has home runs. I don’t care what you think about the guy, all of his claims have proven to be true. As I write this, a list of 103 players who took steroids in 2003 is out. Donald Fehr, the union chief of the MLBPA says that it’s unlikely that he will ever release this list. Call me crazy, but I respect Canseco for outing himself and others who contributed to tarnishing the game. Fehr, on the other hand, is protecting these criminals by not releasing their names. And they are criminals. If you used illegal methods at your job to generate a salary three to five times your actual worth, you would not be suspended three months without pay. You would immediately be fired and most likely be taken to court, tried as a criminal.

      Suddenly, everybody in baseball is a bad guy. The game looks a lot more like Barry Bonds than Chase Utley, a lot more like Ty Cobb than Willie Mays. The good guy is gone. Hey may be there, but you’ll rarely hear about him because he isn’t putting up the bloated numbers, negotiating $25 million one-year contracts, or lying in front of a grand jury. Nope, you only hear about the bad guys. Sadly, what these individuals are doing is fake, so unreal in their performance and in the money they earn from it. They’re the wrestlers of baseball and they’ve been winning every match. Bud Selig is Vince McMahon, the one in charge whose negligence indirectly promotes the evil. And we’re just the fans who get punched in the face for caring too much about something that isn’t even real.

      But it once was. Most of our readers most likely got into the sport before the early 90s, when players weren’t injecting themselves left and right. We got into the game simply because of its blueprint. We love the stats, the diving grab, the long ball, the uniforms, the stadiums, the broadcasters, and the rivalries. Most importantly, we love the 162-game season, because its constant loyalty never wavers like a girlfriend who’s still in community college and much too attractive for us. The game will be there in April, but also in October, unlike so many things in life.

      Baseball can be fixed, my friends, and in a good way. While casual fans quit watching out of disgust and sponsors pull their support because of the negative association, the purists will remain because of this blueprint. Selig and the player’s union will have to rely on this stable base and build up from that. Here are my suggestions:

      1. Officially ban any currently retired players associated with steroid use from the Hall of Fame. With what we know, this would include Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Roger Clemens. Whether or not their stats before using are strong enough to encourage admission is not valid. They cheated, and if Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Jack Jackson are exempt, so are these guys.

      2. As with all sports, statistics tell its history. Baseball purists are some of the most eccentric and passionate stat-heads around. To please them, any World Series championship team that contained a steroid-user shall receive an asterisk.

      3. Bud Selig should force Player’s Union chief Donald Fehr to release the list of the remaining 103 players who tested positive for steroid use in 2003. Since Fehr is publicly holding evidence that incriminates certain individuals, I have no idea how the information hasn’t been made available.

      4. The players on this list, and those mentioned in the Mitchell Report, are also banned from the Hall of Fame. All stats recorded during years of admitted or proven steroid use will contain an asterisk.

      arod5. All active players that tested positive will be banned for the following season without pay. Their contracts would then start up again the season after. Therefore, if they were in the second year of a three-year contract, after their banned season, they would then commence being paid for the final year of their contract. Even though they’ll have been “laid off” for a year, I think they’ll be able to get by.

      6. The popular notion revolving around this preceding idea is that their salaries should be donated to various charities. While that may be a good idea, I’m from the school of thought that selfishly believes baseball fans got incredibly screwed by all of this. With the money back in the owner’s hands, Selig shall order that they use it in a way that gives back to the fans. Three to five games during the seasons will be free to fans on a first-come, first-serve basis (season tickets holders keep theirs). There will be more “free days” such as Free Hot Dog Day, Free Nachos Day, etc. Lastly, ticket prices and concessions will be reduced by a figure both sides can agree on. What fans have been watching the past few years has been a hoax. With many of the big-earners suspended, owners will have less money to pay out. With ticket and concession prices slashed, the game should be fine economically. We’ve already seen that its TV ratings haven’t been affected.

      It’s a long road ahead, I know. Let’s not forget that baseball has dealt with cheaters and liars in the past, just not at this disgusting level. While baseball purists will never forget, we will forgive because we want to. Unfortunately for Bud Selig, there aren’t enough baseball purists to pay his salary, let alone those of Manny Ramirez, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixiera. The casual fans needs to tune in and they’re slowly beginning to stop. It’s not just time to come clean, it’s time for the league to take a well-deserved spanking from everybody who’s seen or been to a game in the last few years. We’ve earned it.

      MLB

      Jose Canseco regrets naming names in book

      October 21, 2008 /

      Jose Canseco now feels guilty for mentioning players’ names in his book “Juiced”, which focused on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball.

      During the A&E Network’s one-hour documentary “Jose Canseco: The Last Shot,” Canseco said he “regrets mentioning players [as steroid users]. I never realized this was going to blow up and hurt so many people.”

      During the program, the 44-year-old Canseco said he “wanted revenge” on Major League Baseball because he believed he had been forced out of the game. The book was his means of getting even, and he named names “to show I was telling the truth” about steroids in baseball, he said.

      Canseco last played in 2001 and retired in 2002 with 462 career home runs, a .266 batting average, 1,407 RBIs and 200 stolen bases for eight major league clubs.

      Among the names Canseco named in “Juiced” as alleged steroid users were Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa. All three addressed the congressional hearing on steroids, with McGwire’s testimony damaging his chances of being voted into Cooperstown and Palmeiro’s unequivocal denial of steroid use haunting him when he later tested positive and was suspended.

      “If I could meet with Mark McGwire and these players, I definitely would apologize to them,” Canseco said, according to the New York Daily News. “They were my friends. I admired them. I respected them.”

      What a shocker – Canseco feels guilty for being a rat and throwing players and former teammates under the bus. He sold his soul for a cheap dollar and 15 minutes of fame and now he realizes nobody likes him. The sad thing is that given the opportunity, he would probably do it all again.

      MLB

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