I'm not a big fan of the legal advice Rusty Hardin gave Roger Clemens, but I have to agree with Rusty on this:

If the federal prosecutors move to indict Clemens and seek to use the substances found on the drug paraphernalia as evidence, Clemens's lawyers are expected to question their authenticity and the chain of custody. Clemens's lead lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said Monday night that he was not surprised to learn that performance-enhancing substances had been found.

"Duh," he said with exaggeration. "Do you really think McNamee was going to fabricate this stuff and not make sure there were substances on there?"

Of course, Hardin has to add, "The fact is Roger never used steroids or H.G.H." He had me at "Duh."

I don't know if McNamee created the evidence or not. I just have a difficult time trusting the evidence.

The Hooton Foundation was taken in by a group that sells steroids.

Rob Neyer responds to Murray Chass who responded to Joel Sherman on Mike Piazza's back acne indicating the catcher did steroids. Murray's article is the most interesting, since he explains the New York Times would not allow him to accuse Piazza of steroid based on back acne, and that Piazza's acne disapppeared once testing started.

Via The Hardball Times, the Philadelphia Daily News talks to a former pitcher about his steroid use. Be sure to read Craig's comments at THB, but this is the part that sticks with me:

Asked if he would do it again, he pauses before answering.

"I don't know how to answer that," he says. "I don't think I would have. Maybe I would have lost my job that year because I wasn't ready. But maybe I would have taken a year to come back and I wouldn't have pushed myself that hard and I might have maintained my health.

"If done in a structured, disciplined and educated manner, then the negative side effects can be minimized. I just think you also have to temper that with some restraint as far as pushing yourself too hard. If you could have a balance of the two, it's a really, really powerful combination for performance."

This player used steroids to bring his levels into a normal high, what you might find naturally in other athletes. I've always thought the best solution was to make steroids legal, but used under a doctor's care and and the use made public. This pitcher's admissions make me believe even more that it's the right thing to do.

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Darryl Strawberry says he would have used steroids if they were available to him. Coming from Darryl, that's not much of a surprise. At least he's not high and mighty about it. The old timers who complain about this generation would have used them, too. There was nothing special about their attitude toward the game, they were just as competitive, just as likely to go to any lengths to win. Check out this history lesson.

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It's official; Barry Bonds won't see a court room until at least July.

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Amy K. Nelson talks to friends of Yuri Sucart to paint a portrait of A-Rod's cousin. He comes across as a gopher, not someone who would come up with a steroid scheme:

"If Alex had been loyal to [Sucart], he would've kept him out of this, kept it quiet," said Rijo, fired last week as special assistant to the Washington Nationals following a scandal involving a top prospect. "Yuri has a life, a family; it's embarrassing for him, too. ... Only Alex knew what he put in his body, only Alex knew, and Alex as a player would know what's going on around steroids.

"I'm pretty sure Yuri wouldn't read a book about steroids, [and] say, 'Alex this is good for you, this would be the best kind.' I'm pretty sure that's not the case."

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Prosecutors in the Barry Bonds case are appealing the decision to not allow evidence in the case because Greg Anderson won't testify. It may be another year before the trial begins:

Unlike California state judges who must rule within 90 days on most matters before them or risk missing their paychecks, federal judges move at their own pace with no time limits placed on their deliberations.

That makes predicting how quickly -- or slowly -- the appeals court will act on the Bonds case a matter of conjecture. Legal analysts have said the appellate court could take as little as two months to more than a year to send the case back to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, who would then need several more weeks or months to schedule and start another trial.

According to the latest figures available from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, it took the 9th Circuit an average of 12.7 months in fiscal 2007 to decide criminal cases, slightly longer than the national average of 12.1 months. The 9th Circuit's performance in 2007 was an improvement over the average of 13.8 months in 2006 and 14 months in 2005.

Davey Johnson should invite Barry to play for team USA in the WBC, now that he'll be free for the rest of the month. After all, they have the strictest drug testing in the world.

Alex Rodriguez's drug of choice is disappearing from the Dominican Republic:

"Primobolan is not imported by Dominican pharmaceutical agencies, but you can get it without problem in the underworld of steroids," said Milton Pinedo, head of the anti-doping program for the Dominican Olympic Committee.

Local bodybuilder Manuel Feliz said the steroid has been getting harder to find since A-Rod's remarks.

"Primobolan is used very frequently in the country's gyms, but since it was linked with the name Alex Rodriguez, it started disappearing from the market," Feliz said.

I wonder why? Is the government cracking down on that particular drug, or did users not know there was a test for it?

Greg Anderson refuses to testify.

The media wants access to the jury questioners filled out in the Bonds perjury case. I've never heard of the press getting those before. Does someone know if that's a usual request in big cases? If I were a potential juror, I'd decline to fill it out for fear my name would be linked to the trial, and something I wrote was misconstrued.

Playboy's Jonathan Littman once again takes on Jeff Novitsky and his prosecution of Barry Bonds. Littman once again paints Novitsky as the evil person in this drama:

A hearing was scheduled. Novitzky's credibility was on the line. In October 2004 he filed a sworn declaration in Judge Illston's court stating that my Playboy article "falsely stated that agent White overheard me discussing getting a 'book deal' in connection with my involvement in this case. This is untrue. I have never had such a discussion with anyone and have never had any involvement with a 'book deal' in connection with this case or any other."

Rains deployed a detective to track down Iran White and learn the identity of the two San Mateo task-force agents who had also heard Novitzky talk about his hope to participate in a book deal. According to The New York Times, the lawmen talked to Rains and told him Novitzky had engaged in a host of improper, if not illegal, acts ranging from tipping off the media to the BALCO search to falsifying investigative reports and his plans to participate in a book or movie deal.

The government dragged its heels in turning over discovery to the defense, until finally Judge Illston ordered it to disclose the secret investigation of Novitzky to defense counsel by May 25, 2005. The government sent the full 150-page report by Federal Express on May 31. With a hearing set for June 7, Conte and his lawyers knew they had struck gold. If made public, the investigation of Novitzky could destroy his credibility and scuttle the government's chance to prosecute Bonds and the other key targets.

With the Bonds trial starting soon, the whole article is well worth the read. Remember, however, you are clicking through to Playboy, so be careful if you're at work.

Hat tip, Giants Win.

Brian Cashman speaks to the NY Times on A-Rod's PED smuggling cousin picking up Rodriguez yesterday:

"It's been handled," he said.

I get the feeling that if some club were to offer the Yankees a bag of balls and be willing to take over the contract, Cashman just might trade A-Rod to lose the headache.

Via The Big Lead, Time Magazine talks to Rick Helling, who warned the MLBPA about steroid use back in 1998:

That same winter, with the party raging at full throttle, one man rose up and basically announced the whole damn thing was a fraud. Rick Helling, a 27-year-old righthanded pitcher and the players' representative for the Texas Rangers, stood up at the winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players Association and made an announcement. He told his fellow union leaders that steroid use by ballplayers had grown rampant and was corrupting the game.

"There is this problem with steroids," Helling told them. "It's happening. It's real. And it's so prevalent that guys who aren't doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they're falling behind. It's not a level playing field. We've got to figure out a way to address it.

"It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that's what's happening. And I don't feel like this is the right way to go."

At that point, the union could have cleaned this up on their own. They could have instituted testing, kept it quiet, pushed doping out of the sport. They chose to ignore the problem, as they were making too much money at the time.

Alex Rodriguez should donate his incentive money for breaking the home run record to charity.

At the risk of sounding like one of those awful wannabe populist columnists -- and with the full realization that this would never, ever happen -- how much fun would it be if A-Rod announced next week that he was donating his $30 million bonus to anti-drug charities? It would be delicious chaos, no? How does anyone root against him? Sure, you could call him a crazy, image-obsessed drug user, but think of the kids! He could even let Hank Aaron pick the charities! The columnists' heads would 'asplode.

It's a great idea, cold medicine or no.

The judge in the Barry Bonds case ordered Greg Anderson to court:

A federal judge has ordered Barry Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, to court to disclose whether he intends to testify at the slugger's trial next month.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston scheduled a hearing for Wednesday morning and ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to tell Anderson and provide him with transportation, if needed.

I assume Anderson will tell her, "No." At that point, she'll finish throwing out the counts of the perjury case that the prosecution needs Anderson to confirm. I suppose she also might hold Anderson in contempt and throw him back in jail.

ShysterBall praises Alex Rodriguez's choice of lawyer:

If you're not immediately familiar with Reisinger's name, it's because unlike the Rusty Hardins of the world, Reisinger looks to defend his clients' interests first rather than be the first one to a television camera. There's a reason why Andy Pettitte didn't get ensnared in a Clemens-like drama.

I remember talking to a lawyer friend during the start of the Clemens debacle, and he was amazed that they were allowing Clemens to talk. His advice would have been to shut up and let the lawyer do all the speaking on the subject. Wise counsel.

A study shows caffeine is a performance enhancer. We'll all be Mormons soon.

David Ortiz took questions about Angel Presinal this morning:

Ortiz stressed he's worked with Presinal, but the trainer never pushed him towards steroids.

"I've known him for a long time," said Ortiz. "All I know from him is how to keep our bodies ready; working out, teaching how to do the right exercises and things like that. He's not just teaching baseball players, he has a guy who runs marathon, a volleyball player, basketball player, everybody. He's been doing that for years. All i know is we all work out with him as a group a guys want to be ready in spring training. And that's about it."

So it strikes me there are a large group of players who work with this person in the off season. Are they all going to get suspended?

Update: Robinson Cano loves the guy, too.

Only Baseball Matters links to an expose of drugs in sports -- from 40 years ago.

The Daily News links Alex Rodriguez to Angel Presinal, a trainer banned by baseball for his involvement with the Juan Gonzalez Canadian steroid confiscation.

The Daily News has Persinal following Rodriguez around during the 2007, staying in the same hotels as A-Rod, but in a different room, with the famous cousin as a roommate. Of course, Alex has cited his 2007 season as a reason to believe he's not juicing. He failed to mention Angel's training as a possible reason, however.

Update: A suspension might come down over A-Rod consorting with Presinal. Hat tip, The Big Lead.

Since Presinal worked with players on the Dominican WBC team during the last tournament, will all those players be suspended as well?

ESPNdeportes.com investigates primobolan in the Dominican Republic, and finds that it could not be purchased over the counter during the time Alex Rodriguez says he injected himself.

Dr. Pia Veras, who oversees the regulatory agency, told ESPNdeportes.com that Primobolan is known as "boli" in the streets of Dominican Republic, and was not legal for purchase during the aforementioned years.

"What Alex Rodriguez stated at the press conference [in Tampa] doesn't make sense," Veras said. "It is important for us to clarify that such substance has not been registered and is not currently registered for legal sale in Dominican pharmacies -- not now and the same applies for the years 2001 to 2003."

Maybe this is why Alex used the street name; his cousin bought it on the streets. Testosterone, however, was available over the counter in the DR.

Since Greg Anderson won't testify, the judge in the Bonds perjury trial won't allow positive tests as evidence.

Fifth Outfielder, in a very funny column, uses Jeter's poor range as evidence that Derek is telling the truth when he claims he never used performance enhancing drugs.

The Big Lead takes a look at some of the Houston Astros of the 1990s and wonders if the Rangers get two much of the state's scrutiny when it comes to steroids.

A-Rod's cousin couldn't evade reporters for long:

As far back as anyone can remember, Yuri Sucart was always by Alex Rodriguez's side.

Sucart would tell anyone who would listen he was Rodriguez's cousin. But he was also Rodriguez's best friend, confidant and personal protector.

On Tuesday, when Rodriguez said in a nationally televised news conference from New York Yankees spring training in Tampa, Fla., that it was his cousin who provided and injected him with performance-enhancing drugs, it was Sucart to whom Rodriguez was referring, Sucart's wife, Carmen, confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday night.

When an ESPN Deportes producer knocked on the Sucarts' door in Miami, Fla., no one answered. The producer then called the Sucarts' house on the telephone and reached a woman who later identified herself as Yuri Sucart's wife. When the producer asked if Rodriguez had referred to her husband at Tuesday's news conference, she said yes.

Carmen Sucart said Rodriguez had given enough details about her husband at the news conference.

"I told you my husband has nothing to say," she said. "What A-Rod said at the press conference is what happened and that is all. And if you want to talk to my husband, why don't you talk to his lawyer?"

I'm sure they'll be not only talking to the lawyer, but to anyone else who knows the man.

Derek Jeter on the steroid era:

Jeter said the most frustrating thing about all of this is how people are labeling several years in baseball the "steroid era". Jeter said he was never tempted to use, was never approached about using it.

"Everybody wasn't doing it," Jeter said.

It was a lot better when it was the lively ball era.

All the rippings A-Rod received in the press didn't seem to hurt him with the fans at today's practice.

From MAD Magazine, a new A-Rod Collectible (click for a larger image):

I think I'd want the 1001st cup. :-)

Bugs and Cranks finds Tim McClelland understanding of steroid use. There also seems to be a hierarchy of use:

"I had a catcher tell me, 'Us peons have to get off steroids; we can't afford them,'" McClelland said. "He said the guys that make the big money, because they put up the big numbers, can get the synthetic steroids, and they can stay on them, and that's not fair".

How expensive are these drugs that someone making the major league minimum can't afford them? How can high school players afford them?

Brian Cashman is not A-Rod's best friend right now:

"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."

One of the points of signing A-Rod to that big contract was that he would be a Yankee when he reached all those great career milestones. If he doesn't win back the fans, however, they'll be millstones, instead.

Not that many people are paying attention to Miguel Tejada. He apologized to his Houston teammates Tuesday:

It's the first time Tejada faced his teammates since he pleaded guilty in federal court last week to lying to congressional investigators in 2005 when they asked if he had conversations with players about performance-enhancing drugs.

"It's part of this country. It's part of my life," said Tejada. "I apologized to my family, I apologized to everyone around me in baseball. Today I stood up and apologized to the entire team."

He'd be getting more attention if it wasn't for Alex.

Having some time to consider Alex Rodriguez's statements today, he appears to have offered a plausible explanation for what happened. It strikes me that Alex wasn't adverse to using something to get a boost, but he didn't want to use something that might hurt him later on. When his cousin offered him something safe, Alex said why not.

In other words, he probably didn't want to take something that made his head or feet big, caused him to go bald, or his back to break out in acne. Here was something over the counter in the Domincan Republic, so he went for it.

Now it's up to the press to try to tear the story apart. I'm sure they'll find Alex's cousin, see when and where he traveled in the DR, maybe even find the pharmacy where the drugs were purchased. We'll see if the story holds up.

More interesting is Alex's admission that he used something in Seattle that wasn't banned at the time but is banned now. There are supposed to be more drug allegations in Selena Robert's book, and I wonder if that was said to counter those future charges?

By the way, in my original post on the Gammons interview, I believe I nailed the one sure lie in the conversation.

I just watched A-Rod's opening statement again, because something happened at the end that I didn't quite get at first. At the end, he said that baseball is bigger than he is, then he looked toward his teammates and said, "To my teammates," followed by a very long pause in which he looked like he was trying to contain his emotions, followed by a, "Thank you," directed at his teammates. He looked like he came close to breaking down at that point.

Alex Rodriguez's press conference is starting about 20 minutes late. I hope it starts soon, because MLB TV is getting a bit repetitive.

Update: The new conference is getting started now.

Update: No follow up questions to keep things moving.

Update: Alex makes an opening statement. Thanks Yankees for their support. He knows he has to earn back trust. In 2001, 2002 and 2003 experimented with a banned substance that triggered a positive.

In 2001, a cousin, told him about a substance that would give him an energy boost. I'm not sure of the spelling, sounds like Bolly. He took it twice a month for six months during the 2001 and 2002 season. He said it only his cousin knew about it. (Update: The drug is spelled Boli.)

He says in 2003 he hurt his neck, and that combined with the start of testing caused him to stop.

So when he told Gammons he didn't talk about this with anyone, he actually talked about it with his cousin.

Update: First question is, if you haven't been caught, would you have come out with the admissions. He says he hasn't thought about that.

Update: He was asked if the substance helped. He says he felt more energy. He also says he injected the substance.

He's asked if it was cheating, and he sidesteps the questions saying that's for others to determine.

Update: A-Rod is asked about the kids and invokes God!

Update: Alex won't name his cousin. Says they never really researched how to use this properly. When asked how he couldn't know what he was putting in his body, Alex falls back on the excuse that he was young and stupid.

Update: Hannah Storm asked if he ever used anything else, and he said he used something with Seattle (I didn't get the name) that since was banned. He implied that he got it from GNC.

Update: Good question on why if he didn't think it was wrong, why was he so secretive. Alex even admits it's a good question. He says they knew they weren't taking tic tacs, but doesn't really come up with a good answer other than he was young and stupid.

Update: When faced with stats that show that a large number of fans don't believe his use was confined to 2001-2003, Alex said that when his career is over he hopes the numbers fall in his favor. If they don't he's prepared to live with that.

Update: The conference ends with Alex asking fans to judge him from this day forward.

I assume the media will be tracking down Alex's cousin to see if his story matches Alex's.

Alex Rodriguez faces the press today at 1:30 PM EST, and Buster Olney has some questions he would like to see asked.

I just received the latest cover of the New Yorker magazine, drawn by Barry Blit:

I'm in the "screw the children" camp when it comes to reasons to ban drugs. If a child is using a baseball player as a role model, they don't have a proper role model in their life. Secondly, a teenagers are not children. They're old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.

The drug use by Alex Rodriguez, however, does send the message that you can be very successful using performance enhancers. If you want to stop that message, then the government has to bust the player, send him to jail, and take away his money. A life-time ban by MLB just isn't going to cut it. Since I don't believe anyone is seriously considering that kind of penalty, Alex's type of doping could be very enticing.

Alex didn't turn into a monster with his drug use. There's no physical deformity as far as I can tell (and he did manage to father two children). He didn't turn into the incredible hulk, he didn't go bald. There aren't reports of 'roid rage. He's really rich and still attracts women. It's not easy to paint Alex as a monster, so a teenager might look at him and say, "with limited use and the right drug, I can get better and stay healthy." That's tough to counter with dire warnings.

Alex Rodriguez apologized to Selena Roberts for the comments he made during his ESPN interview.

I didn't think much the latest witness against Barry Bonds until I read this.

Though you likely don't know who Hoskins is, this is important because she claims that she watched Greg Anderson inject Barry Bonds. She apparently doesn't know what Anderson injected Bonds with, but it's looking kind of bleak for Bonds, especially given Bonds' prior testimony that no one except his doctors ever injected him with anything.

It would be sad if prosecutors got Bonds on lying about being injected, rather than lying about actually using steroids.

Via Instapundit, a drug that increase the ability to exercise by increasing the amount of oxygen transferred from haemoglobin to muscles. The article can't help but issue a warning:

As a result, Lehn hopes to begin clinical trials "as soon as possible". For athletes tempted to use the substance to enhance performance, he warns: "It could be very easily detected."

I could see a player using this instead of speed to get through rough patches of the season. I could also see where it would easy for doctors to prescribe this (like they do ADHD medicine) because an older player's oxygen uptake isn't what it's supposed to be. The targets just keep moving. Maybe we shouldn't worry about it that much.

A-Rod's obituary:

While there is no evidence to suggest foul play, some in the baseball community have speculated that A-Rod actually succumbed to self-inflicted injuries. Immediately after the tragedy was announced, former baseball player and fellow 40/40 club member Jose Canseco told reporters that he saw A-Rod's demise coming a mile away.

"There is no doubt in my mind that he did this to himself," Canseco said. "All the warning signs were there: the surprising power from a shortstop, the spike in home runs, the mood swings where he acted like a complete idiot. The guy has been knocking on death's door since 2003, and everyone wanted to pretend like it wasn't true. I'm not going to get into it too much here because the rest will be in my book coming out next month."

Added Canseco: "Trust me, Albert Pujols will be dead inside a year."

Let's hope not.

Most of Roger Clemens's defamation suit against Brian McNamee was thrown out today.

Ellison did not dismiss the portions of the lawsuit detailing McNamee's discussions with Andy Pettitte about Roger Clemens that occurred in Texas. But since Andy Pettitte has stated under oath that Clemens used HGH/steroids, then Clemens stands very little chance of winning that portion of the suit.

So not only did Roger lose his reputation, he wasted a lot of money chasing a lawsuit that he was bound to lose.

Brian Cashman says just the right things today:

But Cashman, addressing the media at the team's minor league complex, wasn't ready to say he was confident that Rodriguez was clean during his Yankee years. In talking about the game in general, he said, "I'm not confident about anything in the past anymore."

"From (2004) on, we've had testing procedures in place -- that's the best I can go off of," Cashman said. "I'm not here to represent I'm confident of anything of anybody. We've lived through a tough stretch that has shattered that confidence level. If you asked me that question five years ago, I'd be giving you a different answer."

Exactly. We're in a low confidence environment. It's going to be tough to defend anyone.

Sky Kalkman is running a poll measuring disappointment in various entities revolving around the steroid issue. Help him get a decent sample size by voting. If you want to be unbiased, vote first and then come back and read why I voted the way I did.

Alex Rodriguez hired a crisis management firm.

The company, interestingly enough, also employs Bonnie Bernstein. I wonder if she helped him prep for that ESPN interview? According to their web site, here is what they'll do for a client in a crisis:

Assemble a team and build a War Room to coordinate and manage the people, process, and media in real time. Host a strategy session with your team to define objectives, expectations, success metrics, and confirm the pertinent facts and timelines.

At least Alex is doing his part to keep the economy going. Maybe the government chasing steroid users is part of the stimulus. :-)

Joel Jacobsen sends along this article from Scientific American, an interview with a physiologist and former steroid user.

Here's another reason to like Joe Maddon, he makes sense on the steroids issue.

Maddon suggested Wednesday that MLB implement an amnesty program for the reported 103 other players who tested positive then take strong measures to make sure there are no future violations.

"I'm just looking forward to the day that we move beyond it," Maddon said upon arrival at the new spring training complex. "For me, it really needs to come to the point where I'd like to see like an amnesty, basically, and move forward, and then create a situation where the penalties are so severe, nobody would ever even consider doing it again.

I suggested something similar in a BP article a couple of years ago (subscription required). Let people come forward to confess. Find out why they did it, how they acquired the drugs, and in general get a better understanding of the whole steroid era. I doubt that will happen now.

Miguel Tejada pled guilty today:

Tejada's guilty plea grew out of statements he made to House investigators denying that he knew anyone in baseball who used performance-enhancing drugs.

His assertions in 2005 were contradicted by evidence that he had talked to an Oakland teammate about his steroids use and later purchased what he believed was human growth hormone from that player.

Is this really the best they can do, convict someone for lying about talking to other people? They couldn't even get him to admit to drug use. Pathetic.

The more I see of the way Congress acts the more I'm pushed over to the libertarian position that drugs should be legal.

The question of the day (now that the print edition of Sports Illustrated is out); was Alex Rodriguez taking steroids when he joined the Yankees? I don't quite follow the logic:

1. A-Rod fails drug test in 2003.
2. Gene Orza allegedly tips Alex to the date of his 2004 test.
3. Therefore, Alex was juicing in 2004.

This implies that Orza not only knew Alex failed a test, but that Orza knew Rodriguez continued to use in 2004. More likely, if indeed Orza tipped players, was that he simply tipped those who tested positive. If you take A-Rod at his word in his Gammons interview, he never confided in others that he had cheated. Orza's warning, in my mind, carries very little evidence.

Joel Sherman post three good questions for Alex Rodriguez:

You portrayed yourself as being naive about steroid use prior to your Texas years, saying to ESPN "before that (signing with the Rangers) I had never even heard of the idea of taking any substance." However, from the mid-1990s forward your now ex-wife was an avid bodybuilder, your inner circle as a couple was made up of many bodybuilders, and both of you were gym rats at a time when steroids were rampant in bodybuilding circles and gyms. So how is it possible that you "had never even heard of the idea of taking any substance?"

That was the first thing that came to mind when I read Alex's opening statement. He was not that young when he joined the Rangers, and he's a pretty intelligent individual.

The always thoughtful Doug Glanville makes a great point in his article on Alex Rodriguez:

We should step back and think about what we really want to gain from this situation. While I was playing professionally, it was disturbing to watch players cut corners through chemical means to get to that next contract. But I don't see the good in selling our souls while claiming we want to chase the devil from our midst.

I hope we learn how to keep our word. If the tested players had known up front that the results were going to be made public (or that there was even a chance that they might be), not a single one would have agreed to cooperate, and it has very little to do with hiding anything. It has everything to do with privacy. Being A-Rod should not change that fact.

I've written about this before, but it needs to be repeated. Drug testing in baseball represented a break through in owner-player relations, as it demonstrated how the two sides could cooperate to try to improve the game. In the future, some other scandal may emerge that requires the anonymous cooperation of players. That's never going to happen again.

The Clownvision Chronicles alerts me to this story on Miguel Tejada:

Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada was charged with lying to Congress about performance- enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball.

Tejada "unlawfully, willingly and knowingly" failed to state his full knowledge of an unidentified player's use of steroids and human growth hormone in meetings with the investigators in August 2005, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said in a criminal information filed today in Washington.

The filing of a criminal information generally signals that a plea agreement is close. Tejada, a citizen of the Dominican Republic who has a U.S. work permit, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court at 11 a.m. Wednesday, a spokesman for the court said.

Miguel is not accused of taking a banned substance, just lying about what he knew about others taking them. I wonder who the others are and if they've been punished. I wonder how Miguel gets caught and Palmeiro gets away with lying to Congress?

A congressman is calling for Alex Rodriguez to testify before a committee. Why not just make lying to Peter Gammons a crime and go from there?

Bob Raissman felt Peter Gammons offered up too many softballs in the Alex Rodriguez interview. I would have loved to hear Peter tear into Alex about not knowing what drugs he was taking. Fortunately, we have the New York sports media, which has plenty of red meat left. I suspect their questioning will be much harsher in a few days.

The story on Gene Orza has gone from "Gene tipped off players about drug tests" to "Gene selectively told players they were on the government seized list."

Either way, according to two sources close to players, Orza's mission was obvious and widely known among the players.

"If Orza was looking for you, he was letting you know you failed a test," said one source. "The players found it odd because they thought it was supposed to be confidential. It was like he was on a crusade to warn people."

"Orza was going around in the Yankee locker room and letting players know," another source said. "At one point he was asking where he could find A-Rod."

If Orza only told players who tested positive about the list, then he was tipping without tipping. I don't have a real problem with that, however. The whole idea of testing, after all, was to drive the drugs out of the sport. If positive tests in 2003 did that, it's a good outcome.

Via The Hardball Times, whoever leaked the Alex Rodriguez test results likely broke the law:

Not only are the records from the 2003 raid under seal, but also Illston and two other federal judges have ordered that anyone who publicly disclosed those records would be found in contempt. In a statement Saturday, Major League Baseball's Player Association reiterated that point: "Anyone with knowledge of such documents who discloses their contents may be in violation of those court orders."

Though determining who was responsible for the leak could prove difficult, Illston has several options. "Federal judges have extraordinary power," said John Bartko, a former assistant U.S. attorney.

Leakers are difficult to find, because the reporters won't talk. I could imagine Selena Roberts being sent to jail for contempt would only generate more publicity for her Alex Rodriguez book.

The Biz of Baseball posts an MLBPA statement on why the 2003 test samples and results were not destroyed:

Those results were finalized on Thursday, November 13, and the players were advised by a memo dated Friday, November 14. Promptly thereafter, the first steps were taken to begin the process of destruction of the testing materials and records, as contemplated by the Basic Agreement. On November 19, however, we learned that the government had issued a subpoena. Upon learning this, we concluded, of course, that it would be improper to proceed with the destruction of the materials. The fact that such a subpoena issued in November 2003 has been part of the public record for more than two years. See, U.S. v. CDT, 473 F3d at 920 (2006), and 513 F3d at 1090 (2008) (both opinions have now been vacated). Other subpoenas followed, including one for all test results.

I guess it takes more than five days to destroy evidence.

The LoHud Yankees Blog posts the team's statement on A-Rod. The closing paragraph:

"We speak often about the members of this organization being part of a family, and that is never more true than in times of adversity. Alex took a big step by admitting his mistake, and while there is no condoning the use of performance enhancing drugs, we respect his decision to take accountability for his actions. We support Alex, and we will do everything we can to help him deal with this challenge and prepare for the upcoming season."

Police back Selena Robert's statement that she's never been cited:

Meanwhile, police spokesmen in New York, Miami, Miami Beach and Coral Gables have no record of Selena Roberts being arrested, stopped or cited. Reporters are asked to leave by rent-a-cops all the time. But that's not being cited, as Rodriguez claimed on ESPN.

Tom Hicks feels betrayed by the Alex Rodriguez confession:

Hicks said there were "absolutely no suspicions whatsoever" about Rodriguez using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs during his three seasons with the Rangers after signing a then-record $252 million, 10-year contract in December 2000.

With the growing talk about steroids at the time, Hicks said he had general conversations with A-Rod and even asked the player if he had used them.

"Not in an accusatory way," Hicks said during a conference call. "But I certainly asked the question in a way where I came away with a clear answer that he had much too much respect for his own body that God had given him to ever do anything like that to hurt it with steroids."

Hicks also wonders why he should believe the A-Rod didn't use before he came to Texas.

I'm watching the interview, and it's good that Alex said if he were a fan of his, he'd be pissed. At least he doesn't expect fans to forgive him right away.

Update: A-Rod said he didn't know he failed the test until Selena Roberts told him.

Update: ESPN needs to lose the big banner at the bottom. They're cutting off a good portion of Alex's face.

Update: Alex just said that Selena Roberts says he did steroids in high school. He also just said Roberts tried to break into his house.

Update Selena Roberts denies the allegations in a note to ESPN.

Update: One of my favorite new shows is "Lie to Me," about a group that is good at reading facial expressions and body language to detect when people are less than truthful. I'd love to find out how real experts at that responded to the interview. At 6:20, Gammons starts asking Alex if he ever told anybody. He starts rubbing his nose at that point, which supposedly is a sign of lying.

Bugs and Cranks makes a good point about the steroid Alex Rodriguez took:

To be fair, some writers did google primobolan and have noted it's main characteristics. It's very expensive and helps the user add muscle without bulking up. Now, what that means is that primobolan doesn't force your body to retain water which causes noticeable bulking. Building muscle means you are getting bigger, but with primobolan you aren't going to walk around looking like you're carrying watermelons. Primobolan is also a fat-burner, sort of like taking Ripped Fuel but having it actually work. Primobolan is a favorite of competitive bodybuilders during their pre-contest routines because it allows them to become even more cut without sacrificing muscle. Basically, primobolan allows the user to gain muscle without changing their normal food consumption (it does this by telling your body to retain nitrogen which helps build muscle). However, the muscle gain is small which is why Primobolan is considered to be a weak steroid.

Basically, Alex Rodriguez took a steroid that made him as strong as he would have been if he were just going to the gym with the veracity that he reportedly does, with the difference being that instead of packing on pounds he was able to get bigger and remain cut. To put it bluntly, the advantage Rodriguez earned from primobolan was in sexiness, not in strength. I can't wait to hear someone claim that sexiness leads to additional home runs.

Alex, however, also tested positive for testosterone, which I believe does exactly what an anabolic steroid is supposed to do.

Hat tip, River Ave. Blues.

Gene Orza denies he tipped off Alex Rodriguez to a 2004 drug test:

"It's not true," Orza said in an e-mail message. "Simple as that."

ESPN will air a Peter Gammons interview at 6 PM tonight in which Alex Rodriguez admits steroid use:

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, felt all the weight of the world on top of me to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. The complete 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 naïve. 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. For that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."

I'll take some exception to the young, stupid statement. Alex was seasonal age 25 in 2001 and finished the six years in the majors required for free agency. Twenty five is plenty old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.

Alex isn't stupid, either. When I was at ESPN, I used to hear praise for Rodriguez's intelligence, that if he wasn't playing baseball he might have majored in math in college.

Tune in and make up your own mind.

Update: I guess my main question now is, if he lied about this before, why should we believe he only used while in Texas? His tests since are clean, as he hasn't been suspended. Canseco, however, says he introduced Alex to steroid suppliers in the late 1990s. At this point, I'm more inclined to believe Jose.

The Daily News reports that those negative 2003 urine samples still exist and might be retested to see if anything undetectable then is found now. So just because someone came up negative in 2003 doesn't mean he's out of the woods.

As Kevin Kernan notes, both Reggie Jackson and Curt Schilling are calling for the other 103 names to be released:

Mr. October though, did make this telling comment to The Post yesterday: "They caught 104 guys," Reggie asked, pausing for effect, before adding, "Why would they only name one?"

Jackson did not want to comment further, but he had made his excellent conspiracy-theory point. Exactly who is protecting the other 103 and why?

The mystery is why has only Rodriguez's name been leaked? Even Schilling believes it's time to come clean with all the names.

On his blog, "Pitches", Schilling wrote yesterday: "I'd be all for the 104 positives being named, and the game moving on if that is at all possible. In my opinion, if you don't do that, then the other 600-700 players are going to be guilty by association, forever."

Someone is talking about this list, because Kernan goes on to say "there are supposed to be some big, big stars, none though as big and bright as Rodriguez." It makes you wonder if some of the unsigned free agents might pop up.

Kat O'Brien talks about how Alex Rodriguez changed since she first covered him in 2002. She also talked to a scout about Alex's alleged steroid use:

Even though Rodriguez has never been the best-liked player of his generation, for image problems both real and perceived, the taint of steroid use never hung over him. Now it does. One longtime American League scout who has known Rodriguez for years said he had never had cause to suspect Rodriguez of steroid use. That said, the scout said it would not surprise him if A-Rod did use steroids. No, the scout said, Rodriguez is just like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, all three of whom the scout believed would do absolutely anything to be at/remain at the top of their sport.

I talked about that competitive drive in this post on Saturday.

For those just coming to the scandal after a long weekend, ShysterBall rounds up the important elements, including Gene Orza's role in all this:

In any event, it is my view that long after the Alex Rodriguez-specific portion of this drama has played itself out with an apology, a press conference, and a .300/.400/.600 season, this episode will be remembered mostly for the first known instance of the MLBPA truly betraying the interests of its own players. That, my friends, will have longer legs than anything else that broke on Saturday.

We'll see how well Alex back tracks from his denial of using steroids on 60 Minutes. Recent history tells us the best thing to do is confess and apologize, Giambi and Pettitte did that and people were forgiving. Clemens and Bonds didn't and are being dragged through court, and McGwire is getting no support for the Hall of Fame.

Alex Rodriguez is still a great player:

I hope Alex Rodriguez didn't cheat. If we do find out that he cheated, I will wish that he hadn't. But whatever happens, I'm not going to change my opinion that he's a great baseball player. Like many of the greatest players, he'll do whatever it takes to be the best player he can be. For a stretch of five or 10 years -- and yes, perhaps even today still -- being the best player could have meant cheating. Maybe the cheaters were wrong; that's the direction in which I lean, probably because I've got a streak of the moralist in me. But I will not sit idly while great athletes looking for an edge -- not all that different from the many generations before them -- are demonized by the high priests of baseball opinion. I will not.

I understand Rob's point. To be highly successful in a sport, at the level of a Rodriguez or Bonds, you need to be so competitive that winning does become everything. We like to think our athletes are gentlemen and good losers, but it's the bad losers who tend to win championships. The truth is you wouldn't want to be friends with the highest level athletes. Their competitiveness will just drive you away. We should be that surprised that they went the extra yard to win.

This is why the steroid scandals don't bother me as much as gambling scandals. Steroids is cheating to win, gambling is cheating to lose.

Via River Ave. Blues, Sports Illustraded reports that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.

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."

There have been anonymous reports like this in the past, especially involving Albert Pujols, that turned out to be wrong. Assuming that A-Rod has been clean since 2003, I say he's a good case for arguing that steroids don't make that big an impact.

Update: Craig Calcaterra notes that Jose Canseco was right again.

Victor Conte emails the LA Times on the Bonds evidence:

Conte's major points surrounded the chain of custody questions about urine samples the government says belonged to Bonds, were processed through BALCO and sent to a private lab for testing. Three of those tests were returned positive for steroids, the government's unsealed documents claimed Wednesday.

Conte says, "A laboratory test is only as valid as the history and integrity of the sample analyzed. ... It is important to realize that the quality of control measures taken by [the private lab] are of no value if the specimens they tested were not authenticated and handled properly before they were received. It has been indicated that these urine samples were initially handled by [Bonds' trainer] Greg Anderson and ... [BALCO official] James Valente. Neither of them has a degree or license that would qualify them to process such laboratory samples . ... There was no legal chain of custody."

Conte also said there were "discrepancies" in the dates of BALCO ledgers and the private lab's samples.

In both this case and the Clemens case, it's going to be tough to convince jurors that these were pristine samples.

Update: The judge is leaning toward Bonds in regard to siezed BALCO samples:

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said during an evidentiary hearing Thursday that she was leaning toward excluding the results seized by investigators during a BALCO raid unless there is direct testimony tying the urine samples to Bonds. She is not expected to issue her ruling Thursday.

Good news for Barry.

ShysterBall posts a link to the Bonds documents released by the government and notes:

the government is in deep doo-doo if it can't somehow compel Anderson to testify, because it needs Anderson to authenticate almost all of the documentary evidence that implicates Bonds. Without it, they are relying on considerable amounts of hearsay.

Does anyone know if the trial will be televised? It should be an education in perjury law.

Here's what was in the unsealed evidence. The worst is probably this:

In the court documents, prosecutors say Bonds tested positive in 2000 and 2001 for the steroids methenelone and nandrolone. Prosecutors want to use those test results to show Bonds lied when he told a grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.

If true, I don't see how Bonds can spin those as legal at the time. Remember, even those those drugs weren't specifically banned at the time, controlled substances were.

The Feds unseal records in Barry Bonds's perjury case today. If any of you are legal experts and take time to sift through the evidence, I'd love to hear your opinion.

It looks like investigators found Roger Clemens's DNA in one of McNamee's syringes. I tend to agree with Rusty Hardin, here, however:

On Monday, Rusty Hardin, Clemens' Houston-based defense attorney, said the DNA tests "won't matter at all."

"It will still be evidence fabricated by McNamee," Hardin said. "I would be dumbfounded if any responsible person ever found this to be reliable or credible evidence in any way."

The chain of custody here is really poor.

A former teammate of Barry Bonds is going testify against the slugger:

It looks like Barry Bonds has more than just a failed urine test to worry about when his perjury trial gets underway on March 2nd. According to ESPN, Bobby Estalella, a former Giant who admitted using steroids provided by Bonds' trainer Greg Anderson, is prepared to provide "significant testimony" to back up the government's claim that Bonds knowingly took steroids.

Estalella admitted using the same substances, as well as human growth hormone, during the same BALCO investigation that led to the Bonds statements being questioned by federal prosecutors. He's reportedly able to provide first-hand knowledge of Bonds' steroid use, something that would be quite damning to Bonds' case.

The spoilers keep coming. They're taking all the drama out of the trial!

Update: Add the Giambis to the list of people called to testify.

Specifically, the prosecutors want to use the Giambis' testimony to establish that Anderson created doping calendars for both men. If the Giambis testify to that effect, the prosecutors will then be free to argue that Anderson created similar calendars to monitor Bonds's use of banned substances, according to a person briefed on the government's evidence. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his access to sensitive information.

The trial continues to leak like a sieve.

Was this really necessary?

Bob Sikes worked for the Mets when Dwight Gooden took his drug tests and doubts Kirk Radomski's story on the subject:

Gooden returned to the Mets in June after serving a suspension. As part of his return, he was required to take mandatory tests administered by the commissioner. Tests were adminsitered both on the road and at home. A witness for the ballclub was required along with the commissioner's adminsitrator. From the years 1987 through the end of the 1991 season that person was either me or my boss, Head Trainer Steve Garland. We signed a document after Gooden supplied the sample in our presence. No person would have been able to swith a sample afterwards as they were sealed in our presence and we signed the sealed packaging afterwards.

I was let go after the 1991 season and Gooden's time with the Mets ended after the 1994 season - Garland's last. Sam McCrary served as assistant - a man I know well. Although I was not there, I'm comfortable in saying that Garland - or Gooden for that matter would have allowed anyone besides Garland or McCrary to witness Gooden's drug test for the ballclub. That person would never have been a man who served as a clubhouse attendant as Kirk Radomski is quoted as saying in an interview with ESPN.

Kirk Radomski rebuts allegations that there is a glaring inconsistency in his story:

Sunday, The New York Times reported that Radomski may have damaged his value as a witness with a sentence on page 196 that the newspaper said contradicts McNamee's sworn testimony to congressional investigators last year. But for Radomski, the controversy is manufactured, and he suggests that the Times reread the page.

On page 196, Radomski and his co-author David Fisher wrote: "In fact he (McNamee) told me that in 1998 he'd begun injecting Roger Clemens with Winstrol that Clemens had gotten for himself."

As The Times reports, McNamee told congressional investigators in February that he never informed Radomski that he had injected Clemens with steroids or human growth hormone. Radomski says that's right. McNamee told him about the 1998 injections in 2008 - as he and Fisher were preparing the book, which the Daily News obtained Sunday from the publisher, Hudson Street Press.

"He only recently told me about the Winstrol," Radomski said.

I would think writers for the Times could better parse that sentence.

Jordan Schafer says he didn't cheat, but he was suspended anyway:

Schafer said he's guilty of hanging around the wrong people.

"I've never failed a test. I've taken 20 drug tests, and I've never failed one. I didn't take anything," Schafer said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Schafer did not test positive for HGH. Rather, he was suspended after Major League Baseball probed anecdotal evidence of HGH use by Schafer, two sources familiar with Schafer's case told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney last year.

Human growth hormone is a banned substance under the current drug-testing agreement between the owners and players, but the sport, like other professional sports leagues in the U.S., does not test for HGH.

But Major League Baseball does have the authority within the agreement to pursue specific information about possible violations. Schafer was the first casualty of MLB's new Department of Investigations.

So MLB has someone who says Shafer did take HGH? It's not clear from this article.

Jay McGwire's ex-fiancee confirms Jay's story about supplying Mark McGwire with steroids. It looks like the story wasn't satire. Maybe it's finally time for Mark to come forward and talk about the past.

This is a joke, right?

Jay McGwire grew up idolizing his older brothers, became hooked on steroids, crashed, found God, now wants to share his story with the world. Oh, and he also claims he introduced Mark to 'roids.

The picture looks like they photoshopped a head that looks like McGwire on a body builder. How come we've never heard that Mark had a body builder brother? We know one played football.

There is a Jay McGwire fitness center. So maybe this is real. However, the story seems to contradict Jose Canseco injecting McGwire since Jose was out of Oakland in 1992 and Jay says he introduced steroids to McGwire in 1994.

Bob Tufts sends a link to this article by Jonathan Littman on the unsealed court documents surrounding the Barry Bonds perjury case. The gist of the article is that the clear (THG) was not classified as a steroid at the time:

Neither Conte nor Anderson was charged with distributing THG. In fact, nobody in the seven-year BALCO investigation has been charged with possession or trafficking of the drug. Less than $2,000 of drugs was found in the highly publicized raid of the Burlingame, Calif., laboratory in 2003.

Besides the staggering amount of taxpayers' money the investigation has cost, BALCO spawned Congressional hearings, countless television news accounts and the best-selling book "Game of Shadows." Yet the lack of a federal criminal punch made it difficult for the government to bring traditional charges against athletes for taking drugs.

The paucity of illegal profits and drugs raises the question whether prosecutors realized that the only potential for criminalizing the behavior of athletes who took banned substances was to set perjury traps or bait athletes into lying to the grand jury or to a federal agent.

"It sounds like a misuse of the grand jury," said John Bartko, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco who has tried perjury cases. "They go and try to trip the guy into lying."

The government believes it has tripped Bonds, but whether he falls will be determined in court. The fact that the key drug he is accused of taking was legal and not recognized as a steroid under federal law could complicate the case, experts say.

"I don't understand why the government would seek an indictment after obtaining Catlin's expert testimony that the Clear was not a steroid," Cannon said. "Why come up with an indictment based on an ambiguous definition?"

I'd like to hear from the lawyers on this article. It seems to me that the clear was not a steroid because someone hadn't tested it properly yet. Was Bonds told it was a steroid? Was Bonds told it would act like a steroid?

The article talks about the cream being a masking agent, but it certainly contained steroids. We'll see how this case goes. I agree to a great extent that it was a waste of money. However, if Bonds wins, he'll at least be able to try to recover some of his lost prestige. To him that will be worth all the money spent by prosecutors.

Maury Brown interviews Ed Wyszumiala of NSF International, a company that certifies nutritional supplements for MLB.

The makers of the supplement that caused J.C. Romero to test positive for PEDs says the product can cause false positives. That should boost sales!

There seems to be an epidemic of ADHD is major league baseball:

"This is incredible. This is quite spectacular. There seems to be an epidemic of ADD in major league baseball," said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the banned-substances list for the World Anti-Doping Agency.

He recommended an independent panel be established - WADA recommends at least three doctors - to review TUE requests in what he termed "a sport that grew up on greenies."

"I've been in private practice for a lot of years. I can count on one hand the number of individuals that have ADD," he said. "To say that (7.86 percent) of major league baseball players have attention deficit disorder is crying out of an explanation. It is to me as an internist so off the map of my own experience."

Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president of labor relations, said it would be a mistake to compare ADHD in baseball with statistics for the general population.'

"We are all male. We are far younger than the general population, and we have far better access to medical care than the general population," Manfred said.

I'm not a Gary Wadler fan, as he's a first class scold, but it looks like he's right here. Manfred's statement doesn't pass the smell test, unless, for some reason, there is some link between ADHD and playing baseball.

It Is About the Money, Stupid presents a very detailed timeline and summary of the Sergio Mitre/J.C. Romero drug suspensions. What's most interesting is the conflict between Romero and the MLBPA:

Friends, that is the general counsel of the world's most powerful union effectively calling "bullsh*t" on one of its members. Do not take this lightly. Weiner is essentially calling Romero (and his claims) a liar. I cannot believe, for a second, that the senior attorney for the union would publish a comment like this without it being a bulletproof statement.

Hat tip, The Hardball Times.

The J.C. Romero case shows why I liked the original system of punishing players for using PEDs. The first time caught was a private reprimand.

My feeling is that, if Romero did in fact break the rules, he deserves to be punished. Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. feels the same way, as his recent statement seemingly backed major league baseball as opposed to his own supposedly wronged player. Ouch. This case, however, features some extenuating circumstances, as Romero did buy the product prior to its banning.

And, on top of that, while newer bottles display a warning that the supplement may cause positive drug tests, the bottle presented by J.C. in his hearing did not. It really feels like he is getting jobbed here, or made an example of. Perhaps he should never have bought the supplement, but if it was legal at the time of the purchase, and the purchase date can be proven, 50-games seems very excessive. Then again, the MLBPA did issue a revised list that apparently did show OXO-6 as banned.

I'm a bit torn here. This seems like an excessive punishment given the case presented by Romero, but it really seems like he could have exercised a bit more caution. Then again, he did speak to several different sources that cleared the supplement as safe. Either the Phillies training staff needs to be re-evaluated or Romero is receiving unfair treatment. After all, he spoke with just about everyone on his team whose job is to ensure this does not happen, and yet it did happen.

Under the original set of penalties, we wouldn't even know about it, and the issue would be properly taken care of. Romero would know if he used something like this again, he would be suspended, and he would be a lot more careful about the supplements he purchased. The original system gave the players a chance to make a mistake and not have their names dragged through the mud. It was fair. Too many people wanted heads to roll, however, and now the Phillies are without a good reliever for 50 games.

Sergio Mitre and J.C. Romero each were handed 50-day suspensions for a positive drug test. Mitre is upset:

Romero earned two wins in Philadelphia's World Series victory over Tampa Bay last season. He has called the penalty unfair, ESPN.com reported Monday night. He contends the supplement he took during the season was legal because he bought it over the counter at a nutrition store in the United States. An arbitrator decided against Romero in November.

Mitre is with the New York Yankees' Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Triple A team.
The arbitrator ruled Romero was guilty of negligence. The penalty will cost the left-hander $1.25 million in salary, ESPN.com said.

"I still cannot see where I did something wrong,'' Romero told the Web site. "There is nothing that should take away from the rings of my teammates. I didn't cheat. I tried to follow the rules.''

I wonder if other players took this supplement? If so, why is he the only one testing positive. It was my understanding that players knew OTC supplements are risky.

Brian McNamee sues Roger Clemens for defamation. I would think it would be pretty tough to defame someone who wrote an article for the New York Times that was a big lie. I think we've moved from tragedy to farce at this point.

Mindy McCready tried to commit suicide.

Genetic Future links to a commentary in Nature that comes down in favor of "cognitive enhancement using drugs." I like the guidelines they lay down for use, and I think something similar should have been done with performance enhancing drugs in sports.

Baseball will reveal the number of players who tested positive for amphetamines for the first time in 2008. I suspect the number will be low. Players who tested positive in 2007 won't be included, and are likely not to be using with the threat of suspension hanging over them. It would be nice if they included the number already at the suspension testing level entering 2008.

Update: MLB reversed itself on this.

J.C. Bradbury comments on the latest HGH inannity. His conclusion:

I guess I can't blame MLB. It's the cheapest way to fight a public relations problem--that's all this is. And the sad part is that HGH's prohibition signals to potential users that it works, and the drug has many bad side effects. If anything, the war on growth hormone will do more harm than good. As I have suggested before, the best solution is to legalize it.

I agree.

The MLB Players Association is set to file a grievance on behalf of Barry Bonds, but reached a deal with MLB to delay that:

The baseball players' union says it has found evidence teams acted in concert against signing Barry Bonds but it reached an agreement with the commissioner's office to delay the filing of any grievance.

The union expressed concern in May about the lack of offers to the home run king. Filing a grievance would trigger proceedings before arbitrator Shyam Das.

It doesn't say why they agreed to delay the filing. Is baseball going to try to reach a settlement privately? Is MLB willing to investigate and punish clubs? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Looks like Jose Canseco can't stay away from performance enhancers:

Canceco was detained at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing Thursday after agents searched his vehicle and said they found human chorionic gonadotropin, which is illegal without a prescription, said his attorney, Gregory Emerson.

Emerson declined to say if Canseco - who admitted to using steroids in a 2005 book that also alleged steroid use by other baseball players - had the drug, which is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for use in males. The drug helps restore production of testosterone lost in steroid users.

Maybe he's trying to make a comeback.

Bob Tufts sends this article from earlier in the week I missed.

Before Barry Bonds goes on trial next March for perjury, the conduct of the prosecutor and principal witness against him will come under public scrutiny in a long-running dispute over seized major league baseball drug testing records.

The players' union won a ruling before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, setting aside a previous decision that the government can keep steroid tests and records of more than 100 players seized in January 2004. Now, an 11-member appeals panel will hear oral arguments about the conduct and credibility of the prosecutor and investigator carrying out the search.

What makes this issue critical to the Bonds case is that the search was conducted by BALCO lead investigator Jeff Novitzky and was reviewed by none other than Susan Illston, the Bonds trial judge.

Good. Someone is finally reeling in Novitzky.

The jugde threw out the Signature Pharmacy case.

But Judge Stephen W. Herrick, of Albany County Court, found that mistakes by the prosecution had prejudiced the case against five people associated with Florida-based Signature Pharmacy, which prosecutors had alleged was the supplier of at least $10 million worth of controlled substances sold to customers in New York. They are Naomi Loomis and Robert Loomis, the husband and wife who own the pharmacy; Mr. Loomis's brother, Kenneth Michael Loomis, a pharmacist at the company; and two former employees, Kirk Calvert and Tony Palladino.

George E. LaMarche III, a lawyer for Kenneth Michael Loomis and Mr. Calvert, praised the judge's decision, calling it "gratifying and a tremendous relief for everyone involved."

If upheld, Judge Herrick's decision could unravel other elements of Mr. Soares's criminal investigation. Lawyers for people who had previously negotiated guilty pleas with the district attorney said they would be closely examining Judge Herrick's decision to see if it contained grounds to reverse their clients' guilty pleas.

Nice work by the D.A!

Scott Carroll of the Reds ran afoul of the minor league drug program, taking a hormone that stimulates testosterone production. What's interesting is that Carroll appears to be pretty good. His walks and home runs allowed are very low.

Via The Big Lead, Buzz Bissinger and I agree on something.

Maury Brown takes a closer look at the rash of minor league suspensions for performance enhancing drug use.

Maury Brown notes that there have been a large number of minor league suspensions due to substance abuse in the last nine days. I wonder if it was just because the review process finished at about the same time?

They'll ban this soon.

Via Big League Stew, it looks like you can add Viagra to the list of performance enhancers. The New York Daily News learned Roger Clemens took Viagra, and players are using it to increase blood flow to muscles:

Clemens wasn't alone. The pitcher, who is believed to have scored the drug from a teammate, joined the burgeoning number of athletes who have turned Vitamin V and its over-the-counter substitutes into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms.

The drug is so widely used for off-label purposes that it has drawn the attention of anti-doping officials and law-enforcement agencies in the United States and beyond.

"All my athletes took it," BALCO founder Victor Conte, whose acolytes included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, said of an over-the-counter supplement he claimed mimicked the effects of Viagra.

"It's bigger than creatine. It's the biggest product in nutritional supplements."

Plus, it has nice side benefits. Soon, somebody will put together the all erectile dysfunction team. Right now, Viagra isn't covered under MLB's drug policy, and I wonder how much more effective it is than ibuprofen in promoting muscle healing.

Update: J.C. Bradbury talked to exercise physiologist colleagues who don't think Viagra does much to improve athletic peformance.

Steroids, the Musical. I can't resist a show that includes "Xanadu."

I saw Xanadu recently on HDNet Movies, and it's a much better movie than I remember. I was really disappointed in it when I was 19. Yes, the acting is bad and Gene Kelly is underused, but the music and dancing is top notch.

Jeff Bagwell gets pulled into the steroid controversy by a second-hand anonymous source:

For years, Kelly Blair, the owner of 1-on-1 Elite Personal Fitness, bragged to friends and clients who worked out at his Texas gym that he supplied performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes.

Blair, who was recently questioned by federal agents conducting the Roger Clemens perjury investigation, regaled visitors to his Pasadena gym with stories about providing drugs to Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jeff Bagwell and other professional athletes, according to sources. Bagwell, Pettitte and Clemens were teammates on the Houston Astros in 2004 and 2005.

"Kelly wanted everybody to know he worked with the big guys," says one friend with close ties to Blair and the gym, who requested anonymity because that person feared retribution from Blair and his friends. "He wanted to be known as the guy behind the professional athletes."

As always, take this story with a huge grain of salt. The person relaying the story doesn't know if any of the athletes actually got the drugs, or if Blair was just making up stories to seem like a big shot.

Prosecutors rewrote their indictment of Barry Bonds and he's now charged with fourteen different lies. I guess they just need one of them to be real for a win.

Sports Law Blog notes that McNamee's legal team can't use much of Roger Clemens's alleged affairs as evidence. In that case, it seems these leaks are meant to embarrass Roger into dropping the suit.

Roger Clemens issued an unspecific apology:

In his first comments since a tabloid linked him to extramarital affairs last week, Roger Clemens on Sunday acknowledged making ''mistakes'' in his personal life. For those mistakes, he apologized to his family and the public, but the seven-time Cy Young Award winner remained steadfast in his denials that he has used steroids or human growth hormone.

''I know that many people want to know what I have to say about the recent articles in the media,'' Clemens, who has raised his four children with his wife, Debbie, in the Katy and Memorial areas, said in a statement to the Chronicle. ''Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry. I have apologized to my family and apologize to my fans. Like everyone, I have flaws. I have sometimes made choices which have not been right.''

Via the Projo SoxBlog, a comparison of Pete Rose and Roger Clemens:

"(Clemens) is Pete Rose to a T,'' Paul Janszen said Thursday. Janszen was Rose's close friend, workout partner and senior bobo, until Rose stiffed him on some money he owed Janszen . Janszen spilled his knowledge to John Dowd, who made his case with it.

"Certain athletes become larger than the game in the fans eyes, and in their own eyes,'' said Janszen . "(Rose) was always above it all. He thought no one would ever dare to question him. It's the same mentality Clemens is (showing) in the Congressional hearings and on 60 Minutes.''

In many ways, Janszen was to Rose who Brian McNamee was to Clemens. Each was an ordinary guy who befriended, enabled and bobo-ed a superstar player. Each was star-struck at first, then fiercely loyal. "I felt an obligation to protect Pete, and his image,'' Janszen said.

Eventually, each turned on his famous friend. Janszen wanted his money, then did what he felt was right; McNamee wanted to stay out of prison.

"It's not just athletes,'' Janszen said. "It's politicians, celebrities. People who think they're bigger than the institution. "When competition becomes obsessive, when nothing matters (but) winning, not even integrity or honesty, that gets you in the pickle those guys are in.''

It's good to see the breakup of BALCO hasn't stopped Giants players from finding drugs:

San Francisco Giants catcher Eliezer Alfonzo was suspended 50 games Wednesday for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance, the first player penalized this year under Major League Baseball's drug program.

The 29-year-old Venezuelan was optioned to Triple-A Fresno just before opening day and is batting .306 with three homers and 14 RBI in 16 games. The suspension will start Thursday.

Just another example of a marginal players trying to get a boost.

Will Brinson thinks there is something strange about the Jordan Schafer suspension, because Schafer's side won't talk about it beyond, "No comment." I have two words for Will; Roger Clemens. If Rogers reaction to the Mitchell report was to have his lawyer say, "We have no comment on that," Roger saves himself a whole lot of trouble. Writers and pundits, unable to get the Rocket on record, would instead examining McNamee, trying to determine his truthfulness. Given that he lied in a NY Times article, and given that some of his allegations were true, it would have been a mixed bag. There wouldn't have been that much scrutiny of Roger.

So Shafer is playing this right. If he was wrongly accused, he can work this through proper channels without having the media poke into every part of his life. At least he's listening to his lawyers.

Mindy McCready confirms her affair with Roger Clemens.

Roger Clemens filed a defamation suit against Brian McNamee, and now the Rocket's reputation is under attack. Via The Big Lead, this article in New York Daily News:

Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready, a romance that began when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar and Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, several sources have told the Daily News.

The revelations could torpedo claims of an unsullied character that are central to the defamation suit Clemens filed Jan. 6 against his former personal trainer Brian McNamee. Vivid details of the affair could surface in several media projects that McCready is involved with - including a documentary that begins filming today in Nashville, a new album and a reality show.

Canseco's claim that Roger was the only player who didn't cheat on his wife seemed far fetched to me. I had heard rumors about Clemens carrying on with women during my days at ESPN. This just goes to show that not talking about the charges would have been Rogers best defense.

Joe Hamrahi sums up the new drug deal between MLB and the MLBPA. I sure in a year we'll find that this isn't adequate, either.

The New York Times reports baseball will appoint an overseer to do something with drug testing.

The overseer will be appointed to a fixed term and will be given many protections from dismissal, said the lawyers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the current system, Major League Baseball and the union each appoint two representatives to the health policy advisory committee, which oversees the testing program. A fifth person can be appointed to cast a decisive vote when matters are deadlocked. Antidoping experts have questioned its independence.

How do I get this job? The job description is undefined and there's little chance of being fired. I can sit around all day and blog and get paid for something else! How cool is that? Plus, I could revoke all HGH suspensions because it doesn't do anything.

Plus, how cool would it be to have the title Overseer? It sounds pretty godlike. Maybe the job comes with the power to produce lightning from your fingers. A cross between Charlton Heston and Darth Sidious.

Where do I apply?

According to an indictment, some agents were involved in steering players to doctors who were willing to write prescriptions for PEDs.

A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday charged that unidentified agents for baseball players steered clients to a California physician linked in media reports to supplying Troy Glaus and Scott Schoeneweis with illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

more stories like thisNo players or agents were mentioned by name in the 11-count indictment returned by a grand jury against Dr. Ramon Scruggs and two of his associates at the New Hope Health Center in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Schoeneweis is represented by Scott Boras, and Glaus by Mike Nicotera.

"I have no knowledge of this medical practitioner or any relationship that he has with any of our clients," Boras said. "We have never referred any of our clients to a wellness center."

I'd rather they release the names. Now, pretty much all agents are under a cloud.

J.C. Bradbury sums up my feelings on the Jordan Schafer suspension. I'm most interested in how he was caught, since a test doesn't exist yet for HGH. If someone ratted him out, was it a supplier? Was it a teammate?

Bob Watson informed the Padres that the umpires will keep an eye on Peavy's hands to make sure they stay clean.

Bob Tufts donated $50 or more to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive and dedicates this post to the late Doug Pappas and all the excellent work he did with the business of baseball through SABR.

Bob also sends this story, about how the Albany steroid investigation may be in jeopardy because the district attorney was not registered to practice law!

But according to the records of the state's Unified Court System, Soares had no legal authority to act as a district attorney as he is not currently registered to practice law in New York State.

Or Florida either, for that matter.

All of the arrests and charges in the steroid scandal may be in jeopardy and may have to be dismissed because in New York State, persons who are not licensed members of the Bar of the State are prohibited from engaging in the practice of law.

That includes P. David Soares, Albany County district attorney.

This certainly hasn't been a good month for New York Democrats.

Update: Here's an update on the matter.

Suspensions are on hold:

Negotiators are close to an agreement that would call for more frequent drug testing and would strengthen the authority of the independent program administrator. If there is an agreement, the suspensions of Gibbons and Guillen most likely would be eliminated as part of an overall amnesty for players implicated in the Mitchell Report.

I wish they had done this before the Mitchell report so the players would feel free to talk to the investigator.

Pat Jordan tells you all you need to know (and somethings you don't) about Jose Canseco. I need to go disinfect myself now.

Hat tip to Alex Belth.

ABC New posted a long excerpt of Canseco's new book. I found this interesting as it somewhat contradicts the story that Bonds started juicing after the 1998 season:

As I drove off, I remembered an earlier meeting with Barry Bonds, and suddenly our little encounter made perfect sense. It was back in February 2000. We were in Las Vegas, for the Big League Challenge, a home-run hitting contest at Cashman Field. I was given $100,000 just to show up, and I was told that the winner would take home $600,000. I'd just had back surgery, though, so I figured I'd be lucky to hit anything at all.

When we were in the locker room, changing before going out into the field, I took off my shirt and found Bonds staring at me, his eyes bugging out of his head. "Man," he said, "you are ripped!"

I guess I was. I looked like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. There wasn't an ounce of fat on me (if I may so myself). I was 255 pounds of chiseled, high-def power.

"You have to tell me what the hell you've being doing," he said.

"I'll tell you after the game," I said.

We went outside, and I knocked several moon shots out of the park, including twenty-eight bombs in the last round. I went home with the $600,000 enchilada.

Bonds hadn't even made the finals, and he was in a lousy mood, but he waited for me because he wanted us to have our little talk. I told him everything I knew. It was Jose Canseco's Guide to Steroids 101, and over the years I'd had that identical conversation with hundreds of other guys, players and non-players alike.

A few months later, when the regular season got underway, Bonds showed up with an extra thirty pounds on him, all of it muscle. And I'll be the first to tell you: you don't get that kind of muscle just from working out. It's literally impossible. Now, I'm not saying I saw him use the stuff, because I didn't, but I was pretty much an expert on the subject of steroids, and I can tell you that steroids had changed the man -- including the size of his goddamn head. That head was hard to miss!

And of course his performance spoke volumes. Here was a guy who'd never broken 50 home runs in a single season, and suddenly he hits 73, breaking the previous major league record, McGwire's 70.

There's also video of his Nightline interview here.

Brain McNamee passed out in his car and hit a bus head on. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

Bob Tufts sends along another piece of literature that indicates HGH doesn't do much for athletes:

Athletes, in particular body builders, reportedly use growth hormone to increase strength and improve muscle definition (5, 17, 76). We found that although growth hormone significantly increased lean body mass and was associated with a near-significant trend toward decreased fat mass, it did not result in gains in biceps and quadriceps strength. How can increases in lean body mass not translate into strength improvements? Because methods for evaluation of lean body mass do not reliably distinguish lean solid tissue from fluid mass (77) and because the included studies evaluated only short-term changes, we suspect that much of the increase in lean body mass from growth hormone is due to fluid retention rather than muscle hypertrophy (77-79). A nonrandomized study in experienced weight lifters supports this view. Yarasheski and colleagues (80) provided high-dose growth hormone to college football players and weight lifters and found that growth hormone did not increase muscle protein synthesis or decrease protein breakdown, suggesting that an increase in muscle mass from growth hormone use in such athletes is unlikely.

This is not new research, but a synthesis of other research brought together in one paper. As the authors note, there are limitations to this method:

Our study reflects the limitations of the included studies. First, our review highlights the lack of published evidence about the physiologic effects of growth hormone among athletic, young adults. Although we reviewed thousands of studies, only 8 studies assessed strength and exercise capacity for growth hormone treatment in a randomized fashion. Thus, our analysis may not have detected small but clinically relevant differences in outcomes and adverse events. Since no studies evaluated growth hormone for periods longer than 3 months, there is no evidence with which to evaluate the long-term use of growth hormone for athletic enhancement.

Still, it makes you wonder if the money being spent on developing an HGH test is just being flushed down the drain.

Mike Greenwell's wife is a nurse, and she wouldn't let him take steroids:

"The truth?" he said. "My wife's a nurse and basically told me she'd kill me if she caught me doing it. Really. Reality.

"She was a nurse. I looked into it [steroids]. I studied it. I know a lot about steroids, to be honest with you. Because I was very, very tempted as a player to do it and I think there's many, many players out there that were tempted to do it. Probably if I didn't have my wife I would have done it to try to perform at that level. Another little slight reason I retired when I retired. I just didn't feel like it was quite even anymore."

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Bob Tufts sends along this article on performance enhancing drugs in academia:

But others insist that the ethics are not so clear, and that academic performance is different in important ways from baseball, or cycling.

"I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading, because in sports it's all about competition, only about who's the best runner or home run hitter," said Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. "In academics, whether you're a student or a researcher, there is an element of competition, but it's secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you've got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus."

Baloney. Competition for entrance to colleges is fierce. When I applied to Harvard in 1978, one in ten applicants were accepted. Harvard added 300 places since then, but this year's applicant pool faces a 1 in 15 chance of admission. It's exactly the same problem baseball players face. The ones that remain clean might miss an opportunity to succeed because of someone who is doping. On top of that, I've never met a Principle Investigator who didn't face tough competition in applying for a grant, nor a pre-med student who didn't worry about the difference between an A and an A-. It's all about the competition.

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The Baseball Economist tries to answer the question, "Why Do Players Take Human Growth Hormone If It Doesn't Work?" He examines new research on the placebo effect.

It turns out that the placebo effect of human growth hormone could be even stronger than previously expected. New research by economist Dan Ariely finds that the placebo effect is exacerbated by the price of the drug.

Since HGH is four times as expensive as Winstrol, there's a desire to see it work.

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Via BBTF, Sports on my Mind offers one of the best posts on steroids I've seen. He starts by laying into the players and club officials who kept this quiet during the 1980s and 1990s:

Baseball players in the segment like Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine made excuses for steroid abuse:

"What goes on in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse. That's the culture of the game. And it doesn't matter if the guy has a drinking problem or guys are doin' drugs, or whether guys are doin' things in their marriages they shouldn't be doin. You just don't discuss that.

If they're going out there and performing, then there's reason for everybody in the whole chain-of-command to not worry about what's goin' on or at least not explore so much what's goin' on."

In other words, Glavine, as do almost every other MLB player, engages in "the code of silence." It is a code that can only bring with it negative outcomes. It is the code that must be broken by policemen when they expose graft in their department. It is the code that must be broken by politicos to expose lies in the government. It is the code that must be broken by corporate employees when those they work for willfully entwine themselves in illegal acts that negatively impact the public.

However, he also has it in for reporters who don't report all the medical findings on steroids:

Here Quinn laughs sardonically before continuing:

"But that same winter you had the medical directors from both Major League Baseball and the Player's Association speak to clubs at the Winter Meetings and gave what people there said was a pro-testosterone speech. Said that there were definite benefits to it; that they should consider informing the player's about the benefits and dangers. There were people who left that meeting shocked that that was the opinion of the two top medical people in the game."

This is where there the unfathomable disconnect between writers like Quinn and other of his ilk with reality occurs. It is here where Quinn and the many like him stop - for whatever reason(s) - short in their investigative work and cease in aiding the conversation about performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and sound more like propagandists. The result is that they fail to educate their peers, fail the public, and even fail lawmakers who, in part, rely on their countless hours spent close to the subject of PEDs for direction.

The author then cites studies that show for men over 25 years of age, steroids can help enhance well being. It's well worth the read to get the contrarian view on the subject, one for which I hold sympathy. While I don't think players should have used drugs illegally, I do think they they should be allowed to use them under a doctors care, and that use should be public knowledge. Then the fans can decide if they like those players or not.

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ShysterBall analyzes the Bonds grand jury testimony and concludes the government is going to have a tough time convicting Barry:

There are about 70 more pages, but they're pretty much all variations on the above themes. Overall Barry seems evasive and defensive, but like I said, not so much that there's perjury on the face of his testimony. If he's going to get got, the government has to put someone on the stand to call him a liar.

And that's pretty much that. Given the indictment being temporarily thrown out on Friday, it's going to be a long time before Bonds gets to trial. Given the nature of the questioning and charging, he may never be convicted. Given the opinion most of the public has about Bonds, it may never matter one way or the other.

Hat tip, Baseball Think Factory.

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The AP published snippets of Barry Bonds's grand jury testimony. The Smoking Gun has the PDF of the full testimony.

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Your tax dollars at work:

A federal judge on Friday told the government to re-craft its perjury case against Barry Bonds, saying prosecutors had improperly lumped multiple alleged offenses into each of four counts of its indictment of the former Giants star.

At a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge Susan Illston said the case could not proceed because Bonds' indictment, handed up by a grand jury in November, was "duplicitous" - a legal term meaning it was improperly charged. By law, the government can only accuse a person of one crime per count of an indictment. But the judge said that in Bonds' perjury case, the slugger was being accused of telling as many as five different lies under oath in each count of the indictment.

She said the government could correct the flaws by rewriting the indictment or filing a new one.

Update: Bonds grand jury testimony is coming to a browser near you.

The Department of Justice is looking into perjury charges against Roger Clemens. Given the location of the alleged injections, Roger might want to turn to Cartman for advice:

Don Fehr proposed a good idea during Congressional steroid hearings today:

Fehr did suggest one way in which Congress could help sports leagues: require that commercially sold human growth hormone contain a chemical marker that would be detectable in a urine test.

This wouldn't be perfect, of course. Players might be able to buy it outside the country with no marker. At least Don is looking for a workable solution.

Also, to show the level of Congressional intelligence, they think pro wrestling is a sport:

The chairman also said he was "exceptionally and extremely disappointed" that World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon was the only witness to decline the subcommittee's invitation to testify Wednesday.

Tony La Russa doesn't believe Mark McGwire used steroids. Tom Fornelli reaction:

Seriously, if Tony LaRussa honestly believes that Mark McGwire was completely clean after everything we've learned in the years since he retired, the man needs to retire right the hell now. He's obviously insane, and shouldn't be managing a baseball team, even one as bad as the Cardinals are going to be.

The man had andro in his locker, in the Cardinals club house. Yes, it was legal at the time but as we know now it helps. McGwire's bulk wasn't all natural.

The Rocket's lawyer concedes that Clemens may have been at Jose Canseco's party. That's another shot at Roger's credibility.

The New York Daily News reports that a photo exists of Roger Clemens at Jose Canseco's party:

Their leads could include new photographic evidence that has emerged to potentially undermine Clemens' sworn testimony that he did not attend a 1998 party at the home of his then-teammate Jose Canseco - a party that figured both in the Mitchell Report and the Feb.13 public hearing in Washington.

The photo is owned by a young man who attended the party when he was 11 years old and took photos of his baseball heroes, including Clemens. Richard Emery, one of the lawyers for Clemens accuser Brian McNamee, was aware that such evidence had been circulating this week.

The party seems irrelevant to me. It's the kind of thing that fades with time, so it's quite possible McNamee or Clemens or both don't remember the details well, or are conflating multiple events into one. Clemens attending or not attending the party proves nothing.

Jonathan Mayo is a senior writer at MLB.com covering the minor leagues. His new book, Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball's Most Intimidating Pitcher, hits stores March 1st. Jon finished the book before the Mitchell report appeared, and wanted to weigh in on the subject.

Well, the dust has settled...for the moment. While everyone will wait for the next step ... an indictment, a guest spot on "The Moment of Truth," whatever it is, I can finally take a breath and try to figure out what all this Roger Clemens stuff means to me.

Why am I different than anyone else? I'm not really, other than the fact I recently completed my first book and boy, do I have interesting timing. It's called "Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball's Most Intimidating Pitcher." I kid you not. It was written, needless to say, before the Mitchell Report was released and there's nary a word about steroids, HGH, Vitamin B12 or eight-year old gauze.

It is, in pretty much every sense of the term, a pure baseball book. OK, so maybe pure isn't the best word to use, but you get the idea. I talked to some of the greats of the game over the last generation, from Cal Ripken Jr. to Ken Griffey Jr., from Gary Carter to Torii Hunter about the challenges of trying to hit Clemens over the course of his quarter-century career. Seemed like a nice, simple first foray into the book-writing world. Boy, was I unprepared for what was to come.

Since all the news has broken, I'm constantly peppered with questions from friends and family about whether it will help or hurt sales (I'm leaning toward helping), if I'm going to write an epilogue about all this stuff (sorry, no time for it) and, of course, who I believe (not really relevant right now). I've become a kind of pseudo-Clemens expert, though I never talked to the man for the book (I did do a chapter with his son, Koby, and he wrote the foreword).

In the end, I feel the book still stands on its own merits. Whether you think Clemens is guilty (Andy Pettitte's sworn testimony makes it hard not to, doesn't it?) or whether you think his vehement denials are sincere, the challenge of facing Clemens as a hitter hasn't changed. Maybe the respect the players I interviewed for the book had for Clemens has dissipated, but they still had to figure out how to hit him when he was a young fireballer and then figure out how to avoid seeing that splitter later on. Even if there had been public knowledge that Clemens was taking something he shouldn't have been, it's not like Torii Hunter would have refused to get in the box against him, seeking his first hit against the Rocket (he went 0-for-28).

Now maybe I'm being naïve and maybe I just want to sell a few more books. Both could be true. I still think that the insights the hitters gave into trying to make a living off arguably the elite right-hander of his era (Again, whether he cheated is beside the point. He was thought of in that echelon before all of this went down) makes for a pretty compelling book. I hope you agree with me.

As for where I stand on all of this, I'd love to stay impartial. But I also know that would be a weak stance to take. For the longest time, I really wanted to believe in Roger Clemens' innocence. I've been covering baseball long enough not to be shocked by anyone's indiscretions, but for once I wanted one person, especially an icon of this nature, to be wrongfully accused, for his denials to be 100 percent sincere. Alas, it has become increasingly difficult to do so and I've seen the faint hope of redemption pretty much extinguished by the testimony of Andy Pettitte. Who knows, maybe I'll be wrong and the Rocket will prevail. I'll still hope so because that would be good for the game of baseball. But I won't hold my breath.

Gelf Magazine takes an in-depth look at the phrase, "It is what it is." They include a excellent Venn diagram.

Here's why Andy Pettitte wouldn't talk about Roger Clemens at his Monday news conference:

McNamee attorney Richard Emery said Pettitte will be a central witness in the defamation suit Clemens filed last month against his former trainer. Pettitte may be required to sit for depositions and meet with his own attorneys - even as the Yankees prepare for spring training and the 2008 season.

"If I were Andy Pettitte, I would be furious at Roger for filing this case, because Clemens is now pursuing a frivolous defamation case against Brian, who will be forced to have his lawyers grill Pettitte much more thoroughly and painfully than Congress did," libel specialist Emery told the Daily News. "He will be dragged out of the middle of the season, out of the rotation, because of Roger Clemens."

WasWatching praises Hank Steinbrenner for deflecting attention away from Andy Pettitte:

It's a page right out of Big Stein's playbook. Say or do something that will direct the attention towards you and away from the team or a player. Andy Pettitte is getting his share of press today. But, thanks to Hank, it's not all on Andy.

On the surface, Steinbrenner railing at football for having a bigger problem just seems like sour grapes. WasWatching may be giving Hank too much credit here, although the outcome is likely a good one. It reminds me of my favorite Toby quote from The Office:

Toby: [talking to the camera while Ryan and Kelly make out in through the window] I don't think Michael intended to punish me by putting Ryan back here with Kelly, but if he did intend that? Wow...genius.

An excellent Young Frankenstein reference at The Soxaholix.

Maybe what really happened is Gagne sent his imbecile personal assistant, Igor, to go get him Human Growth Hormone but what Igor actually got Gagne was Human Loath Hormone.

Miguel Tejada's lawyers take the right approach:

Miguel Tejada said he's been advised by attorneys not to comment on the Mitchell Report or an FBI investigation looking into his alleged link to steroids.

"I can't really talk about that situation," Tejada said Tuesday morning upon arriving at Houston Astros training camp. "Right now, I just want to talk about baseball, because that's really my focus."

That's why you pay lawyers, so they can do the talking.

Why do players always do this?

Eric Gagne, identified as a user of human growth hormone in the Mitchell Report, apologized today to his new Milwaukee Brewers teammates for "a distraction that shouldn't be taking place."

Pettitte took his time apologizing for taking HGH, starting off with an apology for the embarrassment. Tell these people no one is embarrassed but them. No one is distracted but them. Apologize for what you did wrong.

Peter Abraham's take on the news conference is right on the money.

Andy Pettitte handled himself well in his press conference. He didn't duck any questions or hide behind his lawyers. He made a mistake and he admitted it. America loves giving second chances.

It's hard to buy his excuse, however. Using HGH to get back on the mound (as was his hope) is cheating. It's getting an edge on other players on the DL who are not using. It's getting an edge on the pitcher who took his place on the roster. Getting back in two weeks is getting an edge as opposed to three weeks.

This will blow over for Andy. The only thing that will keep him in the news on this issue is if the Clemens saga continues.

Update: Deadspin has a similar take to Abraham.

The Andy Pettitte news conference is just getting underway. Cashman and Girardi are sitting on either side of Pettitte. His attorneys are going to be available after the conference.

Update: Pettitte thanks the Yankees for giving him more time. He apologizes to the Yankees, Astros, their fans, baseball fans, and his own fans for the embarrassment. He's sorry for the mistakes he's made, but did it to get off the disabled list, not get an edge.

Update: He hates being between Clemens and McNamee, since both are friends. He's sorry he didn't tell the whole truth at the beginning, but was trying to protect his father.

Update: Jeter, Rivera and Posada are there in support. Andy says he hasn't talked to Roger Clemens.

Update: Pettitte is refusing to answer questions of the type, "Did you misremember what Clemens told you?"

Update: A reporter just asked Pettitte if he thought about not pitching. Andy said it crossed his mind. Pettitte said it wouldn't be honorable to do that.

Update: George Vescey asks about how Pettitte's religious beliefs weighed on the decision. Pettitte says in 2002 he felt it was the right thing to do. He says having this press conference will help him sleep at night.

Update: Pettitte is asked about breaking a ballplayer's code by talking. He says when you're put under oath you have no choice, and that sitting there in front of the committee was intimidating.

Update: Pettitte was just asked if he knew about the Mitchell report before he signed the contract. He had to be reminded of the dates of the contract and the report, then he says he did know, but he didn't feel he misled the Yankees.

Update: Andy is asked if he's a cheater. He doesn't think so because he didn't use it to get stronger. He understands, however, that people may think he's lying and they probably think he's a cheater.

Update: Peter Abraham asks if Andy ever used PEDs at any other time. Pettitte says no. Someone else asks if HGH helped him. Pettitte says no, he probably didn't use it long enough.

Update: They just asked Pettitte how he can concentrate on the season if Roger is indited and Andy is asked to testify. I'm always amazed at these questions. He's a professional athlete! He gets on the field and competes.

Andy says he hopes it doesn't come to that.

Update: I'd say so far the questions and answers haven't been too adversarial. Pettitte is keeping calm, and doing his best to answer the questions he can. If he doesn't understand a question, he asks the reporter to rephrase it.

He just asked why McNamee wouldn't be truthful. Andy says that as far as his use is concerned, McNamee was truthful.

Update: My Baseball Bias is also live blogging the conference.

Update: Andy is asked if the game is clean now, or what MLB should do to clean it up. He says after seeing what he's gone through, players are going to clean up quick.

Update: Pettitte says he hasn't heard from MLB, but he doesn't think he'll be suspended. Asked if he's ready for spring training, Pettitte says his arm is fine, but his legs aren't quite there yet.

Update: Andy says he's not worried about what people will think of his career in historical terms. He's very humble about his pitching. He says he's not a great pitcher, but he battles and plays for a great team.

Update: At the end of the conference, Andy's lawyer says the contract was signed a week before the Mitchell report came out. So it's not clear if he knew about the Mitchell report before he signed the contract.

Update: I thought that went well for Andy. There was no confrontational questions, and Andy tried to be as cooperative as possible. He wouldn't answer the one question most people wanted answered, what does he remember of his conversations about HGH with Roger Clemens. He appears to be getting a lot of support from his teammates and the owners. I'm guessing he'll be okay.

Jerome Solomon goes after Andy Pettitte for lying:

He is a performance-enhancing-drug-using pitcher who appears to be in search of a truth that will set him free. Even if that truth is a lie.

When asked about his performance-enhancing drug use, he elected to say something other than the truth on more than one occasion.

Despite knowing this, a congressman described Andy Pettitte as "honest and forthcoming." Another Washington time-waster praised Pettitte for being a role model on and off the field because of his "consistent honesty." His likely-to-be former friend Roger Clemens even called him "a very honest fellow."

For the first time since he lied about the subject the last time they asked, Mr. Honesty is expected to talk to the media about performance-enhancing drugs today when he reports to Yankees spring training.

Few of us can truthfully say we have never told a lie, so struggling with the truth doesn't make Pettitte a horrible human being. But raise your hand if you've managed to be praised for lying.

Maybe it's that people like Andy Pettitte, so they're willing to cut him some slack. Or maybe it's that Andy told the little lie (I only did it once) instead of the big lie (I didn't do it at all). I agree that describing Pettitte as an honest person just doesn't work that well any more.

Andy Pettitte holds a news conference at 3 PM EST today. The media is already at the ballpark.

George King notes the change in testing procedures for PEDs this season:

In other years, MLB would test a handful of players during spring training. Yesterday at Legends Field, 28 YankeesNew York Yankees were required to give urine samples to testers. Every pitcher and catcher on the 40-man roster was tested.

When the remaining 12 position players arrive this week they will be subjected to tests.

Update: There are new rules on packages as well.

In the past, clubhouse attendants would either deliver packages to players or just unpack them. Now the packages must be signed for, logged in and hand delivered. After a player opens one, a team official must then see the contents and sign off on them. If a package lacks a return address, a club executive must be notified.

Prosecutors responded to Bonds's call to dismiss charges against him by making public a failed drug test:

U.S. baseball home run king Barry Bonds tested positive for steroids in November 2001, just a month after hitting his record 73rd home run of the season, U.S. prosecutors said Thursday.

The allegation came in a legal filing in his steroid perjury case that referred to Bonds' long-time trainer, Greg Anderson.

My question is, who tested him? Was this Major League Baseball on a probable cause test, or was this BALCO?

Update: As noted overnight in the comments, the prosecutors made a mistake:

U.S. attorney spokesman Josh Eaton now says that the reference in Thursday's government court filing regarding Bonds testing positive was actually referring to a November 2000 test that was previously disclosed in the indictment of Bonds and had already been reported.

That drug test was included in the indictment unsealed last year, when prosecutors said the test was for a player they called "Barry B."

I bet Bonds's lawyers will have a field day with this.

McNamee's lawyer makes a pre-emptive strike at denying Clemens a pardon:

One of Brian McNamee's lawyers predicted Roger Clemens will be pardoned by President Bush, saying some Republicans treated his client harshly because of the pitcher's friendship with the Bush family.

Lawyer Richard Emery made the claims Thursday, a day after a congressional hearing broke down along party lines. Many Democrats were skeptical of Clemens' denials he used performance-enhancing drugs and Republicans questioned the character of McNamee, the personal trainer who made the accusations against the seven-time Cy Young Award winner.

This won't happen. First of all, by the time anyone got around to indicting and trying Clemens, Bush will be out of office. I suppose he could pull a Ford and pardon Clemens before the fact, but somehow I don't think it will happen. The chances of convicting Clemens for perjury given the McNamee as a witness are slim and none.

A look back at the Black Sox scandal from the pages of the New York Times.

This is the second poll I've seen in which readers are asked a binary choice between Clemens and McNamee as to who is telling the truth. I'd like to look at it from a different perspective:

Do you believe Clemens?

What is the probability that Roger Clemens is telling the truth?

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

View Resulttherapesites.com

Free Web Polls

The LoHud Yankees Blog links to all the depositions related to the Clemens hearings today.

Update: J.C. Bradbury reads Pettitte's deposition and wishes Andy had appeared before the committee today to clarify things.

Cardinals Diaspora makes fun of Clemens for using "misremembered." Turns out, it's in the dictionary. I guess the writer there just doesn't like Texans.

Nationals Journal at the Washington Post is taking a poll on your reactions to the hearings. So far, Clemens isn't doing very well.

Not much changed since halftime. Roger Cossack on ESPN believes the federal government will investigate Clemens for perjury. However, Cossack doesn't believe there's not enough evidence to ever convict Roger.

So it's up to you to make up your own mind. I'm wondering how much Pettitte's testimony weighs in your thoughts. It clearly pushed Rep. Cummings over the edge.

Tom Davis wins the coin flip and starts the afternoon questioning.

Update: Davis is being much nicer to Clemens about the nanny. He's giving Clemens credit for finding her and a chance to explain what went on.

Update: The other Rep. Davis (the Democrat) asks Scheeler if Clemens meeting with the nanny was usual. Scheeler says no, it's done by a lawyer or a lawyer's investigator.

Update: Clemens says he never heard that Mitchell wanted to talk to him. (His agents didn't tell him.) Roger also gives plenty of examples of how easy he is to find.

Update: Waxman points out that Roger's investigators told him before the Mitchell report came out that Roger would be part of it.

Update: Rep. Braley is asking Clemens if he has any symptoms of needing B-12. Roger says no, and when asked if he's a vegan, says he doesn't know what that is.

Update: Braley asks Clemens why he would trust McNamee to do medical procedures like B-12 and lidocaine injections.

Update: I hate it when the reps give speeches rather than asking questions.

Update: Rep. Westmoreland thinks this is a show trial. They shouldn't be concerned with individuals, but the drug policy.

Update: Scheeler is asked about McNamee's questioning. Scheeler says the account of the interview in Roger's defamation suit is in correct. Scheeler says Mitchell asked the questions.

Update: Souder asked a New Yorker if "It is what it is" is a New York expression for telling the truth. The person told him it was.

Update: Clemens just read a statement by his wife. She said McNamee recommended HGH to her, and Roger didn't know she took it until afterward.

Update: Elijah Cummings is saying Pettitte's affidavit swings his opinion to believing McNamee.

Update: Bradford Files reports from the Red Sox clubhouse:

While it continues to rain outside, a group of players are hunkered down in the trainer's room watching the Roger Clemens hearing. Eveyone who walks out are just shaking their heads, relaying how it is not going well for Clemens.

It's over, thank goodness.

Update: Waxman is apologizing to McNamee for some of then comments directed at him. The chairman clearly believes McNamee and not Clemens.

I still don't know what to think about who is more truthful, Clemens or McNamee. Clearly, McNamee memory of specific dates is off, and he's admitted to lying in the past. Clemens has inconsistencies as well, especially in regards to saying he never talked about HGH with Brian, but did after Brian injected Debbie. Pettitte's deposition might be the deciding factor.

Waxman is clearly out to get Clemens. The whole nanny story he told was intended to make Clemens look like he was tampering with a witness. The butt MRI was pretty dramatic as well, getting a doctor to say B-12 wouldn't cause that. More when they resume.

I just got the power back on, it looks like I missed most of Waxman's opening statement. I did hear him read Pettitte's statement, and the statement of Pettitte's wife about the conversations with Clemens about HGH.

The yellow flower held by Mrs. Clemens is a nice touch. She appears to be playing the Maureen Dean role today.

Update: Pettitte used HGH one other time, stealing the dose from his father.

Update: Clemens is starting his statement with condolences over Rep. Lantos.

Update: Clemens says he's guilty of being too trusting of everyone. Clemens is pointing out no matter what he did, stay silent or strongly protest, people took that as a sign of guilt.

Update: Roger just stated categorically that he never took steroids or HGH.

Update: McNamee is up, and he opens with a statement that he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH, and inject Pettitte and Knoblauch with HGH. He's also expressing contrition.

Update: McNamee points out that his stories about Pettitte and Knoblauch were confirmed, and he's also telling the truth about Clemens.

Update: McNamee now says he injected Clemens more often than he reported to Mitchell.

Update: Alan Schwarz is in the committee room and filing report.

Update: It's about the children! No, it's about Roger Clemens!

Update: Rep. Cummings is questioning Clemens now.

Update: Cummings is telling Clemens how difficult it was for Pettitte to testify against Roger.

Update: Clemens said Pettitte misheard about Clemens using HGH. Clemens said he had a conversation with Pettitte about a TV show in which older men got back their quality of life by using HGH.

Update: Rep. Cummings is trying a trick. He keeps trying to get Clemens to say that he thinks Andy is telling the truth. Clemens won't fall for the direct answer and keeps saying that Pettitte misheard or misunderstood.

Update: Now they're getting to Debbie.

Update: Clemens doesn't remember the conversation with Pettitte about Debbie Clemens using HGH. Cummings wanted Clemens to be clear; did he not remember or did it never happen. Clemens says he does not remember.

Update: Cummings gets Clemens on the timeline. The original Pettitte-Clemens conversation was in 1999 or 2000. Clemens said his wife didn't use HGH until 2003, so when Clemens told Pettitte in 2005 that he was talking about Debbie in the first conversation, that doesn't jibe with what Clemens admitted.

Update: Rep. Davis is now questioning McNamee. He wants to know why the number of injections keep going up. He said he didn't keep records, but thinking about it the last two months, he remembered more and more.

Update: Davis asks McNamee why he never said, "I am telling the truth," during the taped phone conversation. McNamee claims when he said, "It is what it is," that's his jargon for I'm telling the truth.

Update: Davis is now asking Clemens about Mike Stanton noticing Roger Clemens bleeding through his pants. Roger says it didn't happen. McNamee says Roger told him it happened.

Update: Davis is getting to the Canseco barbecue. He's pointing out that McNamee's story does not match the evidence they've gathered.

Update: McNamee recalls seeing Clemens nanny at the party picking up one of Clemen's children as he headed for the pool, and Clemens showing up later.

Update: Clemens is asked how B-12 helps him.

Update: Roger said McNamee injected him five times with B-12, McNamee says he never injected Roger with B-12.

Update: Rep. Tierney notes in the past McNamee lied to investigators, both in Florida and to Federal investigators. He's now pointing out Clemens's credibility issues as well.

Update: Tierney is now reading Clemens's account of Debbie's injections. He wants to know why Clemens said he never had a conversation with McNamee about HGH when he did have a conversation about it over Clemens's wife.

Update: Dan Burton is asking Clemens why he thinks McNamee was coerced into lying about Clemens.

Update: Burton is pointing out all the lies that McNamee told over the years to newspapers.

Update: Burton just said he doesn't believe McNamee, and he doesn't like this trial by media.

Update: Rep. Lynch is talking about the abscess on Clemens's buttocks. The Blue Jays did have records of masses on the buttocks.

Update: They have an MRI of the mass, and the report says the mass was likely caused by an injection.

Update: A doctor says the MRI is more consistent with winstrol than B-12.

Update: The doctors and trainers for the Blue Jays at the time said they never said they had seen a reaction like that from B-12.

Update: Rep. Davis notes that Dr. Grossman, who examined Clemens at the time of the MRI, came to a different conclusion.

Update: Davis is pointing out that we know Clemens received a B-12 shot before the injury, but McNamee's recollection of when he gave Roger winstrol doesn't match the time period.

Update: For some reason, the Democrats on the committee seem to be going after Clemens, and the Republicans are going after McNamee. I have no idea why this would break down along party lines.

Update: Scheeler is being grilled about the Canseco party. Does he still believe the meeting occured? He won't give a definite answer.

Update: I would like someone to ask Scheeler why he thinks McNamee is truthful.

Update: Rep. Souder wanted the other witnesses here. He says the released depositions will be devastating.

Update: Souder is also discussing allegations that the owners didn't want testing and they should be investigated.

Update: Souder is noting that McNamee's slow release of information is usually what happens in drug cases. The criminal initially gives up just enough to stay out of jail, then something tics them off and more comes out.

Update: Waxman is now talking about the nanny. She said they her, Debbie and the children stayed over night at Canseco's house, and Clemens was there for some period of time.

Waxman now says that Clemens talked to her on Sunday, before the committee, after the committee had asked Clemens's lawyers not to contact her.

Update: Clemens's lawyers are objecting to Waxman's innuendo. Waxman says Clemens's actions in this regard are inappropriate.

Update: There's going to be a 15 minute break. I'll pick this up again in a new post.

Jay Jaffe is commenting on the Clemens hearing at FoxRadio.

Andy Pettitte's affidavit leaked to the press:

Pettitte said in the affidavit that he asked Clemens in 2005 what he would do if asked by the media about HGH, given his admission years earlier. According to the account told to the AP, the affidavit said Clemens responded by saying Pettitte misunderstood the previous exchange in 1999 or 2000 and that, in fact, Clemens had been talking about HGH use by his wife in the original conversation.

So maybe McNamee's story about Mrs. Clemens was correct. There's also more bad news for Roger:

Clemens will also be asked about corroborating information that committee staff members developed on their own that ties Clemens to such drugs, the lawyers said. That information, they said, stands separate and apart from the assertions made about Clemens by his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, who contends that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone from 1998 to 2001.

From Canseco's affidavit:

"I have never had a conversation with Clemens in which he expressed any interest in using steroids or human growth hormone," Canseco said in the affidavit. "Clemens has never asked me to give steroids or human growth hormone, and I have never seen Clemens "use, possess or ask for steroids or human growth hormone."

From Juiced:

"It was the pitchers who really kept that 'B12' joke going. For example, I've never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he never told me that he did. But we've talked about what steroids could do for you, in which combinations, and I've heard him use the phrase 'B12 shot' in respect to others."

So I guess that conversation was just informational.

It appears the original reason Pettitte won't appear before Congress was wrong:

Sources told Quinn that Pettitte was not a good witness when he appeared before congressional lawyers during a sworn deposition on Monday. Pettitte often contradicted himself, the sources said, so the committee agreed to his request not to appear Wednesday.

Lawyers familiar with the hearings would not say if Pettitte implicated Clemens as a steroids user in his testimony. However, they said that Pettitte's testimony didn't fully jibe with Clemens' versions of events.

So maybe there's less here than meets the eye.

Doctors tell Congress HGH doesn't help.

Joe Posnanski writes an entertaining and serious piece about tomorrow's congressional hearings:

I will admit, with a slightly red-face, that at first I was semi-looking forward to this Roger Clemens-Brian McNamee slimedown. I was looking forward to it in that same guilty-pleasure way that I always looked forward to those Monday Night Football sideline reports from Eric Dickerson*. I'm not proud of myself. But, hey, I couldn't help it. I mean here you have two guys -- one threw a bat at Mike Piazza and later started cutting billion dollar deals which allowed him to be a part-time baseball player from his living room, the other was a one-time cop who left the force so he could hang around ballplayers and, if applicable, shoot them up with steroids and HGH. It looked like it would be a very entertaining event, sort of a Wimbledon final between Ann Coulter and Geraldo.

I, for one, am not looking forward to this. It's just going to be a painful day.

Seth Mnookin tells us why he believes John Rocker:

I also believe him because if the whole steroids mess has shown us anything, it's that the least likely folks have ended up being the most honest. That's in large part because of the frat house/high school locker room mentality of the entire baseball world, where the omerta code is lots stronger than it is in today's mob...and guys like Jose and JR have already been kicked out of the club, so they have nothing to lose.

Dan Fox writes a thoughtful piece on using statistics to identify potential PED users. It's in response to this article by Alan Schwarz.

What I find interesting is that Dan's method would have flagged Carlton Fisk for increased scrutiny. Fisk's late career surge took place from 1988 to 1990, pretty much the height of Canseco's career. The drugs were available.

Mike Fish of ESPN.com interviews Kirk Radomski. Interestingly, he was turned in by a friend of ballplayers. The friend was in trouble with the law:

So who turned him in to the authorities?

A telling document is the affidavit in support of the search warrant executed the day before the December raid in 2005. In it, Novitzky writes that the FBI had provided a confidential informant -- described as an individual awaiting sentence on felony real estate fraud -- who learned through baseball acquaintances of an individual in New York who was supplying anabolic steroids to players.

The informant told Novitzky that one of the players supplied by Radomski had been publicly connected to the BALCO scandal. The identity of that player remains unknown publicly.

According to documents, the informant contacted a baseball source who eventually put him in contact with Radomski. The FBI tape-recorded the calls. Beginning in April 2005, the FBI informant placed at least five steroid orders on behalf of agents with Radomski, the last of which was shipped to a San Jose address provided by Novitzky.

"I know who it is. I know the real estate guy," Radomski says. "It took me a while, but I understood.

"They had a lot of information. I never talked to people about it, so it had to be ballplayers. And the so-called FBI informant, he didn't know as much as they thought he did. There had to be ballplayers that were talking."

The bigger the conspiracy, the easier it falls apart.

This doesn't sound good for Roger Clemens:

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee is supporting Andy Pettitte's request not to have to testify publicly against his former teammate Roger Clemens at a public hearing on Wednesday, a congressional staff person said Monday.

...

Pettitte asked out of public testimony because he did not want to say something to hurt his friend and former teammate while in the glare of national television coverage, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It appears there is something in Andy's deposition that casts a shadow on Clemens.

John Rocker is mouthing off again:

Former major league pitcher John Rocker said Monday that baseball commissioner Bud Selig knew he failed a drug test in 2000 and that doctors for the "league" and the "players association" advised him and several Texas Rangers teammates on how to effectively use steroids.

Rocker, no stranger to controversy, made those comments on Atlanta radio station Rock 100.5.

Later Monday, he told Atlanta sports talk radio station 680 The Fan that "between 40 to 50 percent of baseball players are on steroids" and "in 2000 Bud Selig knew John Rocker was taking the juice."

The league could test back then if there was probable cause. This also contradicts earlier statements by Rocker, detailed in the article.

Looks like Roger's lawyer shot off his mouth:

Rusty Hardin, a Houston-based lawyer representing Clemens, made his comments to The New York Times on Saturday, after he learned that Jeff Novitzky, a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service who has been leading a steroids investigation, planned to attend Wednesday's hearing.

In a letter to Hardin, the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said his remarks could be interpreted as "an attempt to intimidate a federal law enforcement official in the performance of his official duties."

Hardin told The Times on Saturday that Novitzky's intention to attend the hearing was "unbelievable" and "brazen." Hardin also said, "I can tell you this: If he ever messes with Roger, Roger will eat his lunch."

On Sunday, Hardin, who had not yet received the letter from Waxman, said he wished he had not made the "injudicious" remark about Clemens's eating Novitzky's lunch.

When the Mitchell report first broke, I spoke to a friend who is a lawyer. I asked him what he would tell me to do if I was mentioned in such a report. His advice was to let my lawyer do all the talking, and if he were my lawyer, he wouldn't say anything. Hardin has Clemens talking way too much, and is talking way too much himself. As we've seen, Jeff Novitzky isn't someone you want working against you. After all, the IRS doesn't need a warrant to go through Mr. Hardin's and Mr. Clemens's tax returns to see if anything is amiss.

Clemens spent the last few days doing a tour of Congress. Too bad his lawyer undid all that hard work.

Kirk Radomski spoke to Mike Fish of ESPN. He trusts what McMamee says, although the trainer never told Kirk names of players usings steroids. I thought Radomski's comparison of Greg Anderson and McNamee was interesting:

Radomski said he wonders about the silence displayed by personal trainer Greg Anderson when he has been questioned about Bonds, and its relationship to the ongoing Clemens-McNamee dispute.

"I think it is money," Radomski said, speculating on why Anderson hasn't spoken about Bonds. "And you know what? If that is the case, that is fine with me. He made that decision. And Bonds did the right thing there. Then Bonds ain't that bad of a guy. And he's a smart guy, at least. And he looked out for his guy.

"Why didn't Roger do that to Brian, then? You want to protect people. You want to be their friend, but friendship also has to go both ways. I guess Bonds understood that."

So Barry did a better job paying off his trainer than Clemens!

Kirk Radomski avoid jail and Mrs. Clemens is accused of taking HGH. This Clemens story gets stranger all the time.

Update: Yankees Chick sums up the Clemens story very well.

The Smoking Gun has the pictures of McNamee's evidence. Somehow, I don't think this is going to convince anyone.

Brian McNamee turned over what he claims is physical evidence linking Roger Clemens to steroids:

McNamee kept syringes, gauze pads and vials from the 2000 and 2001 seasons because he feared Clemens would deny illicit drug use if the matter was ever investigated, according to the anonymous source cited by the newspaper.

I had a feeling Mitchell was going on something more than McNamee's word. We'll see how this plays out.

Here's an interesting study that shows significant improvement for ball players associated with Jose Canseco. I haven't had time to read the whole report, but it seems to make it likely that without Jose, the PED problem in baseball might be much smaller.

Hat tip, The Book.

The Buffalo News prints the deposition schedule leading up to the February 13, 2008 hearings on PED use.

McNamee told Pettitte about Clemens drug use:

Pettitte and McNamee talked in 2001 and 2002 about Roger Clemens's use of steroids and human growth hormone, McNamee's lawyers, Earl Ward and Richard Emery, said Tuesday.

They said that Pettitte, who has acknowledged receiving H.G.H. from McNamee in 2002, will provide the first account of contemporaneous conversations with McNamee about Clemens's use of performance-enhancing drugs in earlier years.

Clemens's lawyer in Washington responded Tuesday with another strong denial that Clemens had ever used performance-enhancing drugs.

I'd say that's pretty bad news for Roger, especially this part:

Emery and Ward said that not only did McNamee and Pettitte talk about Clemens's drug use on several occasions, but that Clemens might have influenced Pettitte the first time Pettitte asked to use a performance-enhancing drug.

"There was a conversation in the gym where Pettitte came over to Brian and told him, 'Why didn't you tell me about that stuff?' " Emery said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It appeared to be after a conversation with Clemens, but he didn't know what was said in that conversation."

Ward, in a separate telephone interview, said, "Brian discouraged him at first, and then less than a year later he came back and that is when Brian injected him."

It's a good thing Roger dug a deep hole, because he's going to get buried.

My latest SportingNews.com column finds the report by Clemens's agent misleading. I think they had a chance to make a good case for Roger here, but by cherry picking data, they end up giving the opposite impression.

Dugout Central agrees with me that the report didn't prove its case. Sabernomics, however, takes the data and does a better job than the agents of showing positive evidence toward Clemens being clean..

Chuck Knoblauch agreed to a deposition. No word on how he did out from the federal supoena.

The Hendricks Brothers, agents for Roger Clemens, released a statistical report showing that Roger's longevity was due to adjustments, not steroids. Unfortunately, the AP does not link to the report. Has anyone seen it?

Update: The Boston Globe provides the link. You can find the report here.

Update: I just started reading, but there's some evidence the people writing the report know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, the report does not allow copying. At the bottom of page 3, however, the report discusses how ERA is a much better indicator of success than W-L record, noting that wins and losses are also dependent on run support, fielding support and bullpen support.

Update: Page 18 does a good job of refuting the idea that Clemens was washed up after the 1996 season. The writers note Clemens's won-lost record was due more to run support than poor pitching. They also note that Clemens's ERA margin that year was similar to Schilling's in 2004, a year Curt went 21-6 with great run support.

This is actually one of the things I find wrong with the reporting on Clemens. People are giving Dan Duquette more credit now for realizing Clemens was done in 1996. But according to McNamee, Clemens didn't start using steroids until 1998, after he won a Cy Young award in 1997. I don't think Duquette is off the hook for his statement, especially since the only thing wrong with Clemens's 1996 season was his W-L record.

Update: Starting on page 30, the report shows that while Clemens's quality of pitching didn't decline much with age (it jumped around a lot), his quantity of pitching did, both in terms of innings per game and pitches thrown per game.

Update: I finished a quick perusal of the report. It makes a number of good points, mentioned above. However, it does appear to cherry pick comparisons, showing similarities between Clemens, Ryan, Randy Johnson and Schilling to show that Clemens wasn't unusual. Of course, all four of those pitchers are unusual.

The most interesting graphs to me, however, were the ones showing the yearly fluctuations in Rogers ERA margin compared to Johnson and Schilling. Roger's bounces up and down throughout his career. Both Johnson and Schilling start off below their career averages, have a long steady period above their averages, then fall and don't recover. The fact that Clemens bounces around a lot means he suffers years of unexpected poor performance that Schilling and Johnson don't. Those might be the times Clemens is tempted to use steroids.

I'm interested to see what others think of the tables. For example, there is a table comparing the years Clemens, Johnson and Schilling finish in the top five in K per 9. It shows they all do it at about the same ages. If you extend that to top ten, does the table look different? There's a lot here for sabermetricians to chew on.

Jack Cust denies he ever talked about steroids with Larry Bigbie:

Cust told reporters that he never has used performance enhancing substances, saying, "No. No. Not even one game." And, he said, he does not remember having any conversations with Bigbie about steroids.

"He was a teammate of mine five years ago and we haven't talked since," Cust said. "I don't remember any conversations about (steroids). He might have misinterpreted something I said, but I don't remember anything.

"I read the report, and he said he had the locker next to me. I didn't have a locker next to him. I don't know how something like that gets misinterpreted, but I haven't talked to him in five years. ... A lot of people say the same thing, that it seems weird my name is in there when there were other cases where there was a lot more (evidence) accrued."

This was an example of where a player talking to Mitchell might have kept his name out of the report.

Chuck Knoblauch is still hiding out:

He can pull an Abbie Hoffman, eluding Big John Law for years, now and then granting interviews to selected media. He'll become Che' Knoblauch, a symbol of growth hormone rights, the man who refused to turn his butt in to the brownshirts of the totalitarian state. Noam Chomsky will cite him. Keith Olbermann will forgive him for beaning Keith's mom behind first base. He will be the Yankee That Got Away.

In this day and age, I would think it's pretty difficult to hide out. If he uses a credit card or ATM, someone is going to know about it. I would guess they can even ping his cell phone to get a fix on his location. I hope someone writes a book about how Chuck is eluding authorities.

Jose Canseco's new book suffers another setback in credibility. The first ghost writer quit due to lack of evidence, and now there are allegations Canseco tried to solicit money from Magglio Ordonez to keep the Tigers outfielder out of the book:

José Canseco, the former major league slugger and admitted steroid user who exposed other players in his 2005 best-selling book "Juiced," offered to keep a Detroit Tigers outfielder "clear" in his next book if the player invested money in a film project Canseco was promoting, according to a person in baseball with knowledge of the situation.

Four people in baseball confirmed that referrals were made from Major League Baseball to the F.B.I. regarding Canseco's actions relating to the six-time All-Star outfielder Magglio Ordóñez, who was not mentioned in Canseco's earlier book or in any other report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. All four insisted on anonymity because they said they didn't have authority to speak about the events.

Chuck Knoblauch learned the first rule of not being seen.

Ray Ratto suggests the Giants be punished for allowing Greg Anderson into the locker room by allowing the Athletics to move to San Jose if they wish.

Is baseball considering such a notion? Not that anyone can tell. But it is a solution that has several benefits to it, not the least of which is hitting the Giants where Magowan thinks they live. San Francisco's strategy for long-term health has been to drive the A's into the sea, and it galls the Giants that their annual contributions to the revenue sharing plan almost exactly match Oakland's take-home check.

My only problem with this is Oakland was ground zero for the explosion of steroids in baseball. Sure, the ownership and management that let Canseco run free isn't there any more, but there were plenty of Athletics under the control of Billy Beane who we know were users. If you are going to punish the Giants, you might think about punishing the A's as well. Maybe taking away that $13 million revenue check.

A mutual friend of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte says the two pitchers were never that close:

"They were never as close as they were made out to be," a friend of both said on the condition of anonymity. "They just sort of went along with it in the media, because it was a good story."

We'll see how this plays out in their congressional testimony.

Brian McNamee says he talked to one of Clemens agents about the steroid injections in 2004:

What may be the more significant reference to Murray comes moments later, when McNamee recalls that he met with Murray.

"I met with Jimmy in '04, and I told him. I said Jimmy, I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up because you better have some information. I'd rather you be prepared than unprepared," McNamee said.

McNamee's lawyers, in response to questions about the tape, said McNamee had met with Murray because he feared Clemens would fail a drug test.

This story keeps getting more interesting.

Congress set dates for players and trainers to be deposed and to testify.

I wanted to follow up on the post about false positives with this comment. The false positive problem is the reason I believe the first drug testing pushishment scheme was right to keep the first positive test confidential. It gave the player a chance to appeal the decision without being branded a cheater, and it gave MLB a chance to find more evidence against the player, such as shipments from out of state pharmacies. I don't think any test is perfect, but I have to believe raising an internal red flag is better than outing someone innocent.

Mike Lowell wants a perfect HGH test:

World Series MVP Mike Lowell is willing to give blood if that's what it takes to be tested for human growth hormone. But only if the test is 100 percent accurate. Not 99 percent.

"If it's 99 percent accurate, that's going to be seven false positives," the Red Sox third baseman said Thursday before the annual dinner of the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. "Ninety-three percent is 70 guys. That's almost three whole rosters.

"You're destroying someone's reputation. What if one of the false positives is Cal Ripken? Doesn't it put a black mark on his career?"

Mike doesn't quite get the probabilities right. This is a perfect place to use Bayes Rule. What we want to know the probability of not using HGH given a positive test, p(~HGH|+). Let's say we know this (I'm making up the numbers):

• The probability of a player using HGH is 30%, p(HGH) = .3.
• The probability of a player not using HGH is 70%, p(HGH) = .7.
• The probability of a player testing positive given that he is using HGH is 99%, p(+|HGH) = .99.
• The probability of a player testing positive given that he is not using HGH is 1%, p(+|~HGH) = .01

Note that the test is 99% accurate in both direction. It detects 99% of players who use HGH, and it detects 99% of players who don't use HGH. By Bayes Rule, p(~HGH|+) = .01*.7/((.01*.7) + (.99*.3)) = .023, or 2.3% of the positives are going to implicate clean players. In fact, you should get five false positives if you test 700 players, not seven.

You can play with the number if you like. If only 10% of players are using HGH, then the chance of a false positive is 8.3%. In that case, you end up with about six false positives when you test 700 players. The smaller the number of players who actually use HGH, the more clean players end up testing positive!

Lowell's overall point is correct. We need to know the rates of false positives and true positives to really understand the results. There will be players caught who are clean.

It's nice to see MLB put the World Anti-Doping Agency in their place:

Selig fired right back at Fahey, who took over from Dick Pound on Jan. 1.

"WADA does not have a monopoly on independence in the world of drug testing," Selig said.

Rob Manfred, MLB's executive vice president for labor relations, was even harsher.

"These continuing, unprovoked, inaccurate publicity stunts by WADA have created an unwillingness to become more involved with WADA and its affiliates," Manfred said. "We were hopeful that false public statements by WADA would end with its recent change in leadership, and we are deeply disappointed that Mr. Fahey is showing the same counterproductive tendencies as his predecessor."

WADA set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner, with little oversight of their practices. I suspect that if some tried to set up the WAAD, World Agency for Anti-Doping, WADA would react like this (excuse the language):

BRIAN:

Are you the Judean People's Front?

REG:

Fuck off!

BRIAN:

What?

REG:

Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.

FRANCIS:

Wankers.

It is clear, however, that WADA really hates the dopers.

Via Baseball Think Factory, Doug Glanville opines about the steroid era:

The newest round of Congressional hearings danced around Miguel Tejada, the remorse of baseball leadership and a lot of could haves, should haves, and might haves. Moving forward, we must openly address not only the drug issues plaguing the sports we love, but the culture of fear that shakes our society.

We're scared of failure, aging, vulnerability, leaving too soon, being passed up -- and in the quest to conquer these fears, we are inspired by those who do whatever it takes to rise above and beat these odds. We call it "drive" or "ambition," but when doing "whatever it takes" leads us down the wrong road, it can erode our humanity. The game ends up playing us.

Elite athletes, I would argue, are a lot more driven than society as a whole. That's how they became elite athletes. To them winning is everything, which is why it's easy to go down the wrong path.

Ana Santi will spend the next three to six years behind bars. That's one less doctor available to write fake prescriptions.

There's a possibility Bud Selig might suspend Brian Sabean:

Rep. Henry Waxman, the chairman of the committee, asked Selig whether Sabean should have reported the allegations against Anderson to the commissioner's office.

"Of course," Selig responded.

Will Sabean be punished?

"That's all I want to say because this is under review," Selig said. "You've raised a very valid point. It's of great concern to me. Why anybody is in the clubhouse besides the official team trainer is beyond me."

Via Baseball Think Factory, someone who agrees with me that steroids should be legal and administered under a doctor's supervision.

Players are finding a way around the ban on amphetamines.

Rep. John F. Tierney brought up an interesting point that former Sen. George Mitchell did not address in his report - the spike in therapeutic exemptions for amphetamine-like substances to treat attention-deficit disorder.

According to Tierney, the number of these medical exemptions allowed by Major League baseball spiked from 28 in 2006 to more than 100 in 2007. The rate of players using drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall under the exemption last season was eight times the rate of adults using these drugs in the general population.

The players who want to use banned substances always seem to find a way around the rules. Getting a prescription seems to be the popular way right now.

Alan Schwarz at the NY Times Bats blog is live blogging the hearings. It appears Chris Shays isn't clear on the concept of milestones.

Frank Bowman, a former prosecutor, pens an excellent article at Slate on why the DOJ is doing a poor job in the steroid investigation. I agree with Mr. Bowman on this:

That said, the Justice Department has mishandled the baseball steroid investigation in two important ways. First, the DoJ is prosecuting, or at least focusing on, the wrong people. The primary targets should be players, not suppliers. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice had no business feeding Mitchell, and through him the public, damaging information about players it lacks the evidence or the will to prosecute.

According to reporting by the New York Daily News, the FBI had the goods on McGwire and Canseco in the 1990s, but prosecuted the dealers instead. If those two had gone to jail then, we might not be going through the misery of today.

Roger Clemens is not the only player in the congressional cross hairs.

A House committee plans to revisit statements made by former Orioles All-Star Miguel Tejada in 2005 to see whether the shortstop's story is consistent with information contained in the Mitchell Report, according to two sources with knowledge of the inquiry.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee will look for discrepancies between what Tejada told committee staff in August 2005 and what investigators for former Sen. George Mitchell concluded about him in last month's report on steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

It's possible that Miguel faces jail time if the committee found he lied back in 2005.

George Mitchell, Bud Selig and Don Fehr face Congress today. It will be covered by C-Span 2 from 9:30 AM to noon. I won't be watching live, but I'll catch in on my DVR when I get home this afternoon.

I find the story on the double amputee not allowed to compete in the Olympics fascinating in light of all the talk about performance enhancing drugs going on now. It's another example of technology moving faster than the rules of sports. Prosthetics are advancing rapidly. There are now limbs that function much better because they respond to nerve impulses. It's just a matter of time before someone puts a strong motor in an artificial arm, giving someone strength beyond any shot of testosterone. How can we keep such people out of professional sports when in my lifetime we as a society worked to bring down barriers to people with handicaps? And if these people are allowed to play, at what point do ballplayers replace their limbs with artificial ones so they can make more money? In the next century, we may be watching the bionic baseball league.

Last night, Repoz linked to a T.J. Quinn interview with Rusty Hardin at ESPN. Repoz quotes part of the story in which Quinn claims McNamee, in the Mitchell report, indicated Roger Clemens used steroids before 1998. TangoTiger, at The Book, notices that part of the conversation is now gone. That original set of questions makes this passage seem to come out of the blue:

T.J. Quinn: But his career did change. I mean, he was...

Rusty Hardin: No.

T.J. Quinn: You talk to those scouts about when he was finishing up in Boston, and one after another, they say, "This guy's done."

Rusty Hardin: Back up a moment there. I tell you what. Why don't you wait till next week or so to, to so comfortably... Randy and them have been doing a study of his career and stuff -- and see. And, and if you talk about his career being stalled, which year was it stalled, in '96?

T.J. Quinn: It would've been end of '96, right, before he went to Toronto.

Rusty Hardin: He goes to Toronto in '97. Is the contention that -- when McNamee says he started before then. When are people saying he started using them? If McNamee is saying -- and I really didn't realize what you're saying, I have to go back and look at that now. Uh, if McNamee's saying -- when was he supposed to start it? Was he supposed to start it in '95, '94, '92? When did -- when is he supposed to have been using steroids, if McNamee says he had done it before? Uh, and if you look at his 1996 record, did anybody look at what was going on then? Has he started strong every year, or is he starting slow every year? And what standard are people using? I think what you're going to find is they're using the worst standard. They're using win-loss record. And, and, you know, 2005 will tell you why that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I watched him over here at this ballpark, and he pitched his heart out every time and he was losing. And, and he was pitching as well as anybody in the league, and he didn't have a win-loss record reflect that. Does that mean he's pitching worse? I don't think so.

I've reread the section on Roger Clemens in the Mitchell report and there is nothing about Roger using steroids before 1998. Quinn was wrong in part quoted by Repoz. The way the transcript looks now, Hardin comes off suggesting that the Mitchell report indicates Clemens used before 1998. ESPN should return the original section to the transcript with a note that Quinn was wrong about the Mitchell report.

Update: McNamee is willing to talk more about Roger Clemens.

According to a source close to the trainer who says he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, McNamee answered questions from the government and former Sen. George Mitchell's office truthfully, but "he tried not to hurt Roger" in the process. Now that Clemens has sued him for defamation and has mounted a ferocious attack on McNamee, "stuff is pouring out of him." According to Ward, "Brian knows a lot about Roger's moral character and knows a lot about his extracurricular activities. ... There's a lot that he could say to damage Roger's reputation, but we plan on taking the high road. ... If some of this stuff were to come out, Roger Clemens would look very, very, very bad."

Pretty soon the two will be duking it out on the Jerry Springer show.

Brian McNamee claims Roger Clemens developed an abscess on his butt due to steroid injections. The New York Times can't find anyone to confirm that.

But did Clemens have an abscess in 1998? Three members of the Blue Jays' organization that season, including one of the team's two trainers, said in recent interviews that they did not recall any abscess associated with Clemens that year.

In addition, Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said Friday that McNamee had made the same assertion about an abscess to Hardin's investigators Dec. 12. He said they followed up by contacting both Blue Jays trainers from that season, neither of whom backed McNamee's account.

This story can't go much lower.

Major League Baseball formed an investigative unit to combat drug use:

"The department of investigations will have critically important responsibilities in protecting the integrity of our sport," commissioner Bud Selig said.

Dan Mullin, a former New York City Police Officer who had been in baseball's senior director of security operations, was appointed vice president and head of the unit. George Hanna, a former FBI employee currently in baseball's security department, was appointed senior director of investigations.

MLB said the unit "will have broad authority to conduct investigations." The limits of the unit were not immediately clear. Will it place moles in clubhouses? Will it secretly tail players away from ballparks?

I'm actually a bit surprised a unit like this didn't already exist. I hope it doesn't turn out like this.

Knoblauch speaks to the New York Times in a poorly written article by Thayer Evans. Chuck said nothing interesting, and Evans fills the article with minutia like Chuck's wardrobe choice. And what does Knoblauch's failure to return phone messages from the House Committee have to do with the demise of Chuck's ability to throw a baseball?

It appears there was at least one Red Sox player on the 2004 championship team using PEDs.

The House of Representatives put the tarp on the witness table for the ballplayers as they postponed the hearing into steroid use until Feb. 13, 2008.

Congress wants to be prepared when Roger Clemens and his former trainer, Brian McNamee, head to Capitol Hill. The House hearing involving Clemens, McNamee and Andy Pettitte was postponed Wednesday from Jan. 16 until Feb. 13, giving lawmakers more time to gather evidence, to take depositions from the witnesses and to coordinate their investigation with the Justice Department.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was to begin meeting with lawyers for the witnesses Thursday. Clemens' attorney, Rusty Hardin, said he hopes to meet with committee staffers next week. In addition, McNamee is to meet with federal prosecutors Thursday in New York.

"Roger hasn't done anything," Hardin said. "The federal government looking at Roger is fine with me."

Plans are still in place for the Jan. 15 hearing before the same committee about the Mitchell Report on baseball's Steroids Era. The witnesses that day will be commissioner Bud Selig, union leader Donald Fehr and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, the report's author.

If you have tickets, they can be exchanged for any house hearing or put toward season tickets for the Senate. :-)

Via My Baseball Bias, Brian McNamee's attorney shot back at Roger Clemens yesterday:

"What does (Clemens) do, he calls him back with his lawyer in the room and a tape recorder going," McNamee attorney Richard Emery told the Daily News last night. "He wants to play that game, he's going to get buried. I have no compunction about putting him in jail.

"This is war."

Curt Schilling's company could turn this into a video game, World of Rogercraft. I wonder if a smoking syringe will show up?

Update: Sports Illustrated watched the 60-minutes interview with McNamee:

McNamee still holds Clemens in high regard, in part because he admires the pitcher's tireless work ethic, and also because he believes that Clemens was only one of many players using performance enhancers. "It's sad,'' McNamee says. "He was a mentor to me. Roger is an unbelievable family man. I learned how to treat my kids from Roger. And Roger was in no way an abuser of steroids. He never took them through our tough winter workouts. And he never took them in spring training, when the days are longest. He took them in late July, August, and never for more than four to six weeks max ... it wasn't that frequent.'

"Within the culture of what was going on, he was just a small part of it. A lot of guys did it. You can't take away the work Roger did. You can't take away the fact that he worked out as hard as anybody.'' When McNamee, also a former strength and conditioning coach with the Blue Jays from 1998 through 2000, is asked to estimate how many major leaguers were involved with steroids during that period, he answers without hesitation. "More than half,'' he says.

MLB issued a press release detailing new rules on club house personnel and access. The most important one is this:

The overnight notice to Clubs before the arrival of Comprehensive Drug Testing personnel has been eliminated. All Clubs will be required to have a single, designated area for collections in both the home and visiting clubhouses. Collectors will be provided with permanent, official credentials and their access will be facilitated.

It's going to be tougher for people working in the clubhouse, as they'll undergo background checks and random drug tests.

I missed most of the conference, but Peter Abraham said I didn't miss much. Roger is playing a recording of his conversation with McNamee.

Update: I missed most of the tape, but Clemens is just starting to take questions at 5:40 EST.

Update: ESPN bleeped out Roger Clemens. He really seems to be upset. He ended by saying he can't wait to get into the private sector where he doesn't have to answer these questions again. His anger really appears to be genuine. Unless he's a really good actor, I'm tempted to believe him.

Update: MGL heard the tape of the phone call between Clemens and McNamee and thinks Clemens is guilty.

Update: You can listen to the recording here.

AP Headline:

Pettitte to use Sosa's lawyer at hearing

I wonder if this means Andy will forget how to speak English?