First I’m going to show you a quote by Mets SS Jose Reyes that’s being passed around the Internet:

“[The FBI] asked me if [Dr. Anthony Galea] injected me with [some kind of drug that's extracted from calf's blood]. I said no. Basically, he took my blood out, put it in some machines, spun it out and put it back in my leg.”

Next I’m going to give you a bit of follow-up commentary by my own self related to the previous quote:

“What the fuck?”

If after reading the above quote by Jose Reyes and my commentary that followed, your immediate reaction is to conclude that Jose Reyes took banned substances, that would be your right. But that would be irresponsible for me to say for sure until we have more information. So instead, you get my passive-aggressive implication.

In conclusion, Jose Reyes is a cheating cheater who cheats [perhaps].

I don’t know about y’all but when it comes to choosing sides in a he said, he said argument over steroids I am almost always going to take the side of Canseco.  He’s batting about .900 right?  He was right about McGwire, Palmeiro, ARod and bunch of others.  Hell the only one I know he got wrong was Clemens who he said wasn’t using.  So when McGwire says that Canseco lied about injecting steroids into him (and vice versa), I’m going to side with the guy who has been proved right again and again.

In Canseco’s 2005 book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big,” Canseco claimed he introduced 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.

Canseco and McGwire helped lead the Athletics to a World Series sweep in 1989.

“Jose is out there doing what he’s doing, but I’m not going to stoop down to his level,” McGwire told ESPN on Tuesday. “None of that stuff happened. He knows it. I know it. I’m not going to stoop down to that level.”

This seems like a silly lie and to me it feels like McGwire’s denying it for one of many reasons:

1. How detailed it is: it’s one thing to say you used drugs, but it’s another thing to describe in detail for all the public to hear the gory details of those drugs.  Saying you used steroids is one thing.  Saying that you shopped for a specific PED and needles, that you inserted a needle into your ass, that you dealt with negative side effects like shrunken nuts and bitch tits is an entirely other thing altogether.
2. Sounds kinda gay right?  I personally wouldn’t like other people knowing that another man inserted stuff into my ass.
3. Jose Canseco isn’t very likable and being associated with him probably isn’t much fun.

For eleventy years this guy denied and denied what we all knew was true and then he comes out of the steroid closet, days after learning he didn’t make the HOF, and he gives a weepy half-truth?  Fuck that noise.

As you can see in plain sight, Mariano Rivera spits on baseballs. This is cheating. I have always felt in my heart that he was a cheater so now that there is visual evidence, I feel vindicated. It takes a “True Yankee” to cheat the way he has for all these years. So to Mariano Rivera, welcome to the club of cheating Yankee assholes. May you take your rightful place with Alex Rodriguez. Roger Clemens, Jason Grimsley, Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, Ricky Bones, Kevin Brown, Bobby Estelella, Glenallen Hill, Darren Holmes, Derek Jeter, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Dan Naulty, Denny Neagle, Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, Mike Stanton, Randy Velarde, Ron Villone, Rondell White, Todd Williams and Mickey Mantle.

I hope the Baseball Writers leave you off the ballot for the Hall of Fame. You have embarrassed yourself, your team, your family and your sport. For Shame. Read the rest of this entry »

Hold onto your butts.

That’s it.  It’s all over.  Johnny Law got his way and now we may never find out who was on the list of 104 steroids users who failed their 2003 test.

…the Ninth Circuit held that the federal government’s seizure of computer files which implicated 104 major league players as steroids users violated those players’ Forth Amendment rights.

Well pardon my freedom but the Fourth Amendment never stopped the Bush Adminsitration from doing anything and I don’t think this here Obama Administration should follow suit especially when the issue is baseball and not something trivial like invading a sovereign nation which was never linked to the attacks on our country.  So I ask, nee demand, that every single one of you call your congressmen, your senator and your president, demanding that we all ignore the Fourth Amendment just this once.  This time the Fourth Amendment gets treated like the 18th for awhile.

The only positive I can see coming from this is that we won’t have the ridiculous trickle of names that pop up during a slow news cycle.  You got lucky, Luis Gonzalez, you just might have been spared having everyone’s suscpicions confirmed.

This is, of course, tough shit for Manny, Papi, Sosa, ARod and a few other Yankees.  Those poor bastards were just famous enough to warrant outrage.  How dare they be really good at baseball and then also use steroids to become even better?  I like my steroids users to be mediocre when they start and then become slightly above average.

The case will be reviewed by the Supreme Court where it will promptly dismissed when the justices all make wanking motions.

Albert Pujols, you poor sumbitch.  Here you are, the greatest right handed hitter of our generation and all anyone wants to talk about is whether you stick needles in your butt.  Life is unfair and frankly you deserve better.  Actually, you know what?  You don’t.  You don’t deserve shit.  Baseball fans don’t owe you a goddamn thing since they’re the ones who have been screwed over this past decade and a half.  Baseball fans are the ones who deserve a straight answer.  You deserve to shut your piehole, quit your bitching, and collect your massive paycheck which has become inflated due to other users.  Even if you’re not using you’re benefitting from a broken system.

So shut your steroid accused mouth and hit the ball and cash your checks and think about the real victims here: me.

I’ll give you two shots at guessing both the league the suspended athletes play in and their nationality.  Oh, and I’ll even give you a little hint: last year, 42 of the 69 players suspended for steroid use were from this league?  Give up?  How about another clue?  Manny Ramirez returned to Dodger Stadium to cheers yesterday.  Still no guess?

Speaking of suspended Domincans, in light of the Manny suspension/minor league hoopla, Bud Selig is going to try to change the rules on how a suspended player reenters the baseball community after the suspension.

In an hour long Q&A with the BBWA Tuesday, Bud Selig announced that he is looking to change the way players who are suspended for steroids re-enter the baseball world.  His goal is to prevent them from playing in the minors during the duration of their suspension to avoid the circus that followed Manny Ramirez around this past month.  He said:

“I’ll let them work that out. I don’t want to do our negotiating here,” Selig said. “But it’s 50 games and then go do what you got to do to get back into (shape).”

Still no guess?  Really?

Seen last night on Yahoo Sports was this little red flag about Mike Cameron.

Suspended for 25 games for banned stimulant as of Jun 20, 2009

Now, true, he was suspended for two games for bumping an umpire (later reduced to one game) but is there anything else to the story?  Is this just a mistake?  Or should we just file this under slow sports day?  Cameron never struck me as a steroid user because he never had any huge spikes in performance.  However, the fact that he’s 36 and has seen no drop off in production is a bit of a red flag, maybe?  I don’t care.  I’m currently under the assumption that everyone ever is using steroids.

It’s that time again. The time when we all get to start making guesses about who we think was using and who we hope is never mentioned in the same breath as Jose Canseco. The reason? Well since Major League Baseball refuses to release the entire list of the 104 players who tested positive for PEDs in 2003 even as individual names leak every few weeks, I have taken it upon myself to speculate as rampantly as possible.  For this task I’ve enlisted friends of the site as well as the 3000 writers who contribute on a regular basis.

Today’s game goes like this–In the comment section below list the following:

1. Player I Most Want to See Linked to Steroids (regardless of any current existing evidence):

2. Player I Least Want to See Linked to Steroids:

3. Player I Would Be Most Surprised to See Linked to Steroids:

4. Player I Am Certain Is Using or Has Used in the Past:

Seeing as it’s my poll, I’ll take the first shot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ridiculous Afro

The big “news” that circled the Internet and the sports radio airwaves on Tuesday afternoon was a NY Times article indicating that Sammy Sosa was one of the 104 players who tested positive for steroids in MLB’s first mandatory drug test conducted back in 2003. Since Sammy Sosa was a former Cub, I thought it would be fun to take to the streets and get inside the minds of the people of Chicago and find out their thoughts in regards to this bombshell. So I hopped in the MLJ news van and headed downtown to get some answers. The following are the results of my sidewalk interviews. Read the rest of this entry »

This post originally ran on Feb. 11th, shortly after we learned about ARod’s steroid usage.  Since then, Sammy Sosa’s name was leaked from the list of 104 which I think is bullshit.  I’m not a Sosa fan but this selective leakage is unfair to everyone involved and is probably bad for baseball.  As such, I’m going to repost this every time a single name from the list is leaked.  If baseball won’t allow us to know who was cheating then I feel absolutely no remorse in speculating.

Just a few numbers to throw around regarding steroids. If 104 players (including ARod) in 2003 were caught using steroids or other banned substances, then consider the following:

If there are 25 players per team and 30 teams, then the total players in the league is approximately 750 (this number will be higher with minor leaguers and injury replacements, etc).

This means approx 1 out of 7 ballplayers in 2003 were using steroids. This equates to about 3.5 per team. So I figured since we don’t get to look at the names of the players who failed their tests, we should begin the wild speculation. Below is a list of every team and group of players that I think might have failed their test in 2003. Feel free to disagree or offer alternative players. Some of these are hunches, others (the ones with the asterisks) are players who were listed on the Mitchell Report or who have admitted to PED use in the past. Keep in mind, the players in the Mitchell Report were cited for various infractions including HGH use which may not have shown up on MLB’s tests back in 2003. Also, you’ll notice that some teams have a higher amount of rule breakers (I’m looking at you Orioles, Rangers, and Yankees) so I don’t feel the need to give each team 3 players. Let the rampant irresponsibility begin! Read the rest of this entry »