Sammy Sosa

Sadly, is anyone surprised? I didn't think so.

Steroids

Rob Neyer at ESPN pointed out this article in Sports Illustrated about the popularity of steroids. It includes the following quote:

Are anabolic steroids widely used by Olympic weight men? Let me put it this way. If they had come into the village the day before competition and said we have just found a new test that will catch anyone who has used steroids, you would have had an awful lot of people dropping out of events because of instant muscle pulls."


This article was published in 1969.

Yes. 1969.

Something to consider next time Bud Selig refuses to take any responsibility for steroids or (seemingly) anything else.

Bonds

The judge just tossed a lot of the evidence against Bonds for being inadmissible hearsay. For prosecutors, the problem is that Greg Anderson still isn't talking. He's the guy who could tell the story, and he's not going to say anything. (Why? Beats me.)

Is that all bad? Perjury is bad, of course, but does Bonds really deserve to go to jail? I dunno. If he does, it won't be for long. As I've said before, don't lie to the Feds.


Quick Hearsay Review: Inadmissible hearsay is evidence that exists (in this case the test results) but can't be used in court. I still remember my Evidence professor saying that hearsay is 'an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.' Here, all those test results are statements that were made outside the court, and the prosecutors are trying to use them as evidence. Hearsay actually has lots of exceptions, but apparently the judge didn't think that this evidence fell within any of them. The reason the rule exists is that we would prefer that evidence be offered by a live witness. In this case that witness would be Bonds (who can't be forced to say anything due to the Fifth Amendment) or Anderson (who won't testify).

103 To Go

It's also worth noting that A-Rod was one of (supposedly) 104 positive tests. That's a lot of players--four complete teams worth. Who are the others? I figure the names will all come out sooner or later.

A-Rod

So A-Rod juiced too. Huh. I didn't expect that.

I don't think we can necessarily get inside his head to say why he did it, but we can wonder whether they helped him. I don't know. If you look at his career stats, it's murky. He averaged almost 42 homers from 1998-2000, then jumped to averaging 52 a year from 2001-2003. He played every game with the Rangers, so it's not surprising he would hit more homers, but then with an unquestioned workout routine, maybe the drugs helps his durability. His slugging percentage was marginally higher in 2001-2003 than it had been from 1998-2000, but not by much.

So I'm not sure anyone can say whether he improved. Of course, this all supposes he's telling the truth when he says that he only juiced from 2001-2003.

It will make for an interesting season this year in the Bronx....

New Bonds Indictment

The feds indicted Bonds again. A copy of it is here.

To review the bidding, he was first indicted in November.

What hasn't changed is the key paragraph 9:

During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other professional athletes.

Each count of the indictment points to testimony by Bonds in front of the grand jury that he didn't take steroids.

Legal sidenote: a grand jury is like a jury, except it does investigations, not trials. It's made up of ordinary people, and it sits in private, not in public. This grand jury was investigating BALCO, so it questioned all sorts of people related to that case, includikng athletes (Bonds, Tim Montgomery, Giambi, etc.)

A grand jury can give you immunity, which means that you won't be prosecuted for anything you say there, as long as you tell the truth. So if Bonds told the truth to the grand jury, even if he admitted taking steroids, he couldn't be prosecuted for it.

However, if you lie to a grand jury, they're going to come after you. Giambi's hitting prowess is vanishing, but at least he's not under criminal indictment.

Mitchell Report

American Lawyer magazine is perhaps not the most widely read publication out there, but it had a moderately interesting article on the Mitchell Report.

Apparently it cost Bud Selig* $20 million. Was it money well spent? I don't know, but it sure would have been a lot easier if he had taken action ten years ago, or five years ago.

The article does make it very clear that Mitchell reached out repeatedly to the Players Association. Roger Clemens can yammer on all he wants about how easy he is to find, but that's hardly George Mitchell's fault. He ought to be complaining to his agents and the Players Association.

Clemens

Among the *many* ludicrous things Clemens said yesterday was a bizarre discussion of his availability to George Mitchell. Someone asked him why he didn't respond to Mitchell when Mitchell asked to talk to him when he was preparing the report.

Clemens said that he didn't know that Mitchell wanted to talk with him and went on at length about how easy he is to find, emphasizing how he responded to Bud Selig when Selig asked him to be a member of the USA team for the World Baseball Classic. He blames Bud Selig for not contacting him.

Obviously this is wildly irrelevant. Although he didn't pick up the phone to call Clemens personally, Mitchell DID contact his agents on multiple occasions. I can't imagine that his agents didn't pass word along to Clemens that he was under investigation. It's ridiculous for Clemens to try to blame Mitchell or Selig.

I'd wager that his agents told him that Mitchell was asking about him, but they also advised him to ignore Mitchell, which was the same advice the players union was giving. Oops.

Clemens!

The Clemens hearings were today, at least the first round. Tom Verducci has a great summary.

At this point, I don't think *anyone* is believable. It's clear that McNamee should never be trusted. I'm sure some of the things he's saying are the truth. But he's now changing his story too many times for me to keep track.

Clemens is also entirely unbelievable. He keeps changing his story, and he never managed to describe why McNamee would lie about what happened.

I think part of the problem is that professional athletes aren't used to having anyone actually pay attention to what they say. They are asked dumb questions ("What does this game mean for you?") their whole life, they give the same stock answers ("We're taking things one game at a time") and then repeat. Their job isn't to be honest, it's to perform on the field. They are used to lying, both the big lies and the small ones. Normally, they are the ones who choose what questions to answer and which sportswriters to ignore. Here, the dynamic is reversed. Congress chooses the questions, but they have to come up with something for every one of them.

Outside the bubble, where people actually pay attention to their every word, and where their questioners have the power, they stumble. They're not used to this.



Not surprisingly, these hearings give sportswriters the opportunity to look ridiculous. Jason Stark:

What I'll be looking for -- what you should be looking for -- is who squirms, who stammers, who hedges. Look for body language. Look for who can't recall what.

Hey Jayson, do you by any chance remember the last round of congressional hearings? Do you remember if there was a player who had the whole 'convincing body language' thing down? Remember how that turned out? Maybe don't trust the body language quite to much.

More steroids

For a long time, Barry Bonds and his lawyers would insist that this whole steroids investigation was really just a ploy to "get" Bonds.

While it played well in San Francisco, it wasn't really true, and they're going to have a hard time getting anyone to believe that argument anymore.

Clemens

This Clemens story is going to be great. He just filed a defamation lawsuit against his old trainer, Brian McNamee.

The legal case is so weak that it must be for show.

In nonlawyer talk, to win a defamation case a plaintiff has to show that the defendant made a false statement and that he (the plaintiff) suffered damages. Was McNamee's statement false? Obviously, that's the big debate--whether McNamee told the truth. Clemens would have to show that McNamee lied. Seems unlikely, considering that McNamee testified to the Feds under penalty of perjury.

Even worse for Clemens, it's harder for "public figures" to win a defamation case. The theory is that public figures voluntarily put themselves out there to be praised by people, so they also have to accept more criticism. As a public figure, Clemens will also have to show that McNamee acted with "actual malice". I don't think he can show actual malice.

McNamee made his comments under oath to the Feds. Even if McNamee is lying, and it would be crazy for him to lie under oath, it doesn't make sense that he would have actual malice to Clemens. (I suppose it's theoretically possible that he has a big grudge against Clemens and made all this up to "get" him, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.)

In any event, I'm sure the legal ridiculousness is just starting!

Clemens

Wait, Roger Clemens is now going to hire private investigators to look at Brian McNamee, the source of the Mitchell report's allegations against him?

Welllllllll, ok. But why didn't he do it when George Mitchell contacted him? Why did Clemens stonewall Mitchell? This doesn't exactly help his credibility.

Pettitte

Andy Pettitte was named in the Mitchell report for taking human growth hormone and after previously saying he was clean he came out with the following:

If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize. I accept responsibility for those two days. Everything else written or said about me knowingly using illegal drugs is nonsense, wrong, and hurtful. I have the utmost respect for baseball and have always tried to live my life in a way that would be honorable. I wasn't looking for an edge; I was looking to heal.

What? "If what I did was an error in judgment"? No! It *was* an error in judgment. You were wrong! And you lied about it! By not admitting that you were wrong, you are not accepting responsibility.

And please, "I wasn't looking for an edge; I was looking to heal." Wrong again! Looking to heal is an edge.

The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell report is out and it is big news. Big big big.

There are about a thousand tangents to this story. Here are three:

-I don't think anyone ought to believe that the list of players is comprehensive. Mitchell got just a couple of suppliers to talk. They were surely not the only enablers out there.

-The Players Union is justifiably roasted. The union tried to obstruct Mitchelll at every turn. They would have been *far* better off to just blow the doors open with information and get everything out in public at once. Since information is going to keep coming out over the months and (ugh) years, it's going to be far worse for them. Donald Fehr sees everything as a fight. Sometimes he was right, but in this case he was wrong. And he's going to reap what he sowed for a long time.

-Roger Clemens. Clemens Clemens Clemens. Along with every other named player, he refused Mitchell's offer to talk before the report came out. (Surely this was another canny ploy by the union. Oops.)

The evidence against him is damning. Tom Verducci correlated Clemens' steroid use with his 1998 numbers. Before steroids, he was 6-6 with a 3.27 ERA. After he was 14-0 with a 2.29 ERA. It's worth noting that the last four years before 1998 Clemens was 40-39. It looks like he was indeed on the downside of his career.

The question is what Clemens is going to do. He doesn't have a lot of good options.

I don't know whether he cares about the court of public opinion. He could become a recluse, a la Mark McGwire, and avoid the public entirely.

He could have his publicist issue some bland statement, and retire. Refuse to talk about the past. This is what I bet he'll do.

Or he could come clean. Admit what happened in every detail. It would be fascinating. It would also require honesty and humility. No chance.

Steroids

Baseball players are not, generally speaking, deep thinkers. Regardless of their intelligence, success in baseball requires a short memory. This is a roundabout way of saying that it's not often that one looks to baseball players for commentary on current events. Every now and again, though, they surprise me. David Ortiz said the following:

It's like they've placed that issue on the same level as Iraq. It doesn't make sense to hear people talk more about whether Barry Bonds used steroids than about people dying in Iraq.

Well said, Papi. Hope the knee heals quickly!

It's been clear that *someone* on the inside was leaking the grand jury testimony to the Chronicle reporters in the Bonds steroids case.

Of all people, it was Victor Conte's former lawyer! His lawyer!

One question for Mr. Ellerman: "Excuse me, sir, how dumb are you?"

I'm going with 'extremely, extremely dumb'. It's pretty basic that grand jury testimony is confidential.

But it gets better. Not only did he leak the testimony, he then swore to the judge that he didn't do it. Ouch. And not to disparage the importance of this investigation, but this ain't exactly the Pentagon Papers here. I can't wait to hear his explanation for why he felt obliged to do this.

I see that he recently changed his law license to inactive status. That will shortly be changed again to "Disbarred."

Well, that's over. Time to resume.

Hall of Fame ballots went out. We're going to have some controversy. First, the easiest. Cal Ripken is in on the first ballot. Duh.

Tony Gwynn is also in on the first ballot. 3141 hits, .388 lifetime average, 20 seasons with the same team, .324 in his last season (!!). In.

Then it gets interesting. Mark McGwire. And, for that matter, Jose Canseco. Actually that's easy too. Regardless of stats, which are pretty impressive, no one in baseball likes Canseco. Not gonna happen.

McGwire is a tough call. Plenty of writers won't ever vote for him, but they're *especially* not going to want him to share the stage with Good Guys Ripken and Gwynn (Gwynn, ahem, obviously didn't use steroids). How good a player was McGwire? He had nine really good years (87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99). He was hurt in between. Mediocre fielder, no speed. Obviously a year for the ages in 1998. On the other hand, yes, RBI's are a little bit goofy, but he still had fewer than Rusty Staub (and just seven more than Canseco). If he hadn't been hurt in the middle of his career, his numbers would look a lot better. Which is sort of the question. Why was he hurt so much? I don't know, but it looks pretty suspicious.

My guess is that he doesn't make it in. Certainly not this year, I don't think ever. Which won't bode well for Barry Lamar Bonds in a few more years.....

I always figured that Rafael Palmiero would make it to the Hall of Fame as the ultimate monument to being Pretty Good for a Very Long Time. His career numbers will add up impressively, but has he ever been all that good? He played in a grand total of four All Star Games. He never won an MVP, and only three times was he in the top ten. Forget about being the best player in the league, was he ever the best player on his own team? Ever? Was he ever the best player at his own position?

And now he's been suspended for steroids. If I were a voter, it would be a tough call. Can you vote against a guy with 500 homers and 3000 hits? I dunno. But if I was ever going to vote against someone with those stats, Palmiero would be the guy.

Well, I admit, I hadn't thought much about Bo Jackson these last few years. But now we know what happens when a truly innocent man is accused of using steroids.

We're still awaiting lawsuits from Messrs. Bonds, Giambi, McGwire, Sosa, etc....

Since Mark McGuire has essentially admitted using steroids, I wonder what this means for his chances at the Hall of Fame. Surely he was a shoe-in before all this, but what about now? I think he'll make it eventually, but not on the first ballot.

I also think he should fire his lawyer immediately. He should admit that he used steroids while crying, say it was a big mistake, say he was young, apologize (especially for the kids, sniff sniff) and point out that it was all legal at the time. Perhaps he should mention Jesus. We forgive people who admit they were wrong. But not people who weasel around behind lawyer-talk.