My Three Step Plan to Clean Up Baseball

Here's my simple plan to clean up baseball and restore its integrity.

1. Announce a one month amnesty period. Any player that comes clean during that period is exempted from repercussions in their past (not any future cheating, of course). This exemption, obviously, wouldn't extend to the fans who would very likely be thoroughly disgusted and pissed off about so many players having been cheaters. There would be a real danger of baseball folding because of the revelations of those taking up the amnesty offer.
2. At the end of the amnesty month, hair samples, urine samples and blood samples will taken from each player, part of the samples will be tested and part will be stored to be tested at a later date as testing methods improve.
3. Any player that did not take the amnesty and is found to have cheated in any way, at any level is permanently banned from Major League Baseball. No baseball, no Hall of Fame, no residuals, no pension, nothing. It would be as if they had never played the game.

It would be brutal to implement and, by some estimates, up to 75 or 80% of players might be eligible to take the amnesty offer. Some would not, of course, and some would eventually be found out to have cheated. Some players would have to pay the price and be banned but the vast majority would see the wisdom and fairness of the new rules and play fair.

Making the penalties severe enough would make the risk/reward equation too lopsided to make sense to even attempt.

But, for something as harsh as this to go into effect, it would require an untainted commissioner with a great big set of balls which pretty much excludes Bud Selig. It would also involve the player's union realizing that these steps would be for everyone's betterment. Why? Because PED's shorten player's lives and suck the quality out of lives that aren't shortened. A cleaner game is a healthier game and that means the players' long term interests are being better served.

Let me know what you think in the comments, I don't pretend to have all the answers and this may not be the perfect solution but I believe its on the right road to a real solution to drugs in professional baseball.

Reflecting on Manny

For those of you not knowing, Manny Ramirez just got handed a 50 game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance. His first attempt at an excuse is that he was taking a boner medication that happened to contain a banned substance. Yes, his story is that he took steroids to get an erection.

The fact that those steroids made him stronger and able to hit a ball further and recover more quickly is just a lucky side effect. Of course.

And he feels really, really bad about it. Of course.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports is recommending a lifetime ban. Make an example of one of the game's premier hitters. Take away his meal ticket, take away his fame, take away everything that is supposed to mean something to him.

Only by banning cheaters can baseball start to clean up its image. Only by throwing out those that would cheat can baseball regain its integrity.

I'm not so sure how I feel about a lifetime ban.

On the one hand, it is the Dodgers and I hate the Dodgers. On the other hand, it doesn't seem fair to, all of a sudden, start banning players for transgressions in the past. In fact, I think there's a legal term, ex post facto, that covers the concept. It says, basically, that you can't change the law and then go back and prosecute people who broke the newly changed law. You can prosecute moving forward but you cannot do it retroactively.

There's also the very difficult to test for without drawing blood, HGH, human growth hormone, issue. Some speculation is that use in the majors is rampant because it is so difficult to detect. I know, if I were a pro baller and I needed some extra pop in my bat, I would not even consider steroids because of the risks and would go straight to the HGH. But I'm not a baller and am not a cheater by nature. I prefer to win or lose on my own merits and not because of chemicals in a needle.

Do I dislike baseball as a result of all the cheating, the fake apologies (like A-Roid's utter BS, orangeface ridiculousness), the denials, the convoluted excuses, the false outrage by an enabler like Bud Selig, the taint on the name of the game? Yeah, I do certainly do like the sport less. Do I still enjoy it, watch it, consume it and play it via fantasy leagues? Yeah. Its probably akin to learning that Santa Clause isn't real, it doesn't mean you stop celebrating Christmas, it just means you are a little less trusting, it means you are a little more cynical and it means that monstrous whack knocking the ball clear out of the park is a little less laudable and a lot more suspect.

This Week in Weak and Strong #4

Lots of stuff going on this week. Let's get to it.

Weak Catch - Ex-MLB catcher Bobby (Ch)Estella, who was built like a brick shithouse and now we know why, will accuse Barry Bonds of getting him steroids in the government's never-ending witch hunt for one player while an entire league was rife with PED abuse.

Weak Reason to Fight - Two friends got into a little fight "over nothing" after some drinks and one was arguing with his girlfriend. One punch knocked the kid down, he smashed his head on the ground, never regained consciousness and died the next day.

Weak Legislators - The California budget impasse continues unabated. Three months and counting.

Strong, LiveStrong - The Amgen Tour of California is set to kick off. But there were already some pre-race fireworks when an asshat of a reporter named Paul Killage asked Lance Armstrong a question during a press briefing. This is the same reporter that referred to Lance Armstrong as "a cancer in the peloton". Nice.

Strong (and Just) Punishment - Richard Craig McNew raped and murdered a 90 year old woman. He's been found guilty and is going back to prison for the rest of his disgusting and pathetic life.

When Sorry Isn't Good Enough

Yes, I'm already biased against Alex Rodriguez, he plays for the Yankees after all. And he's been used to replace the now forcefully retired Barry Bonds as the face of steroids and drug use/abuse in Major League Baseball. He is, afterall, one of its stars and a story about him having lied in a national interview about using PEDs and then having to admit that he is a big fat liar, he did, in fact, cheat and use drugs to enhance his on-field performance (no word from Madonna if he's used drugs to enhance his on-hag performance yet).

But here's the thing, his apology, all softly lit to try and make him a more forgivable transgressor, his body language, his words all add up to a big fat nothing.

He wasn't contrite, he wasn't sorry for what he did, he was sorry for having gotten caught and for tainting every single record he's had thus far and every single record he may still break. He's sorry for tainting his chances at baseball immortality and he doesn't really come across as sorry so much as angry that he got caught and angry that he is being forced to apologize.

Do I feel bad for him being pushed out in front of the Steroid Witch Hunt 2.0? Nope. Nobody forced him to cheat, nobody forced him to take drugs for three years (at least that's what he's admitted to) and nobody forced him to air his false apology. Screw A-Tool, he's a plastic douchebag who isn't contrite in the least, he's more angry than sorry which means he's completely missed the point of apologizing for cheating.

Clemens-cy

New drug policy lets cheats off the hook like, oh I don't know, Roger Clemens.

I get that there is no way to go back and verify who was cheating and who wasn't. But to broadbrush the Mitchell Report and just say anyone noted in it gets a "Get Out of Jail Free" card smacks of sweeping it under the rug.

I mean, now that Bud Selig has gotten Barry Bonds out of baseball, he seems to have lost his bloodlust for steroid abusers.

Is the game cleaner now than it was five years ago? Undoubtedly.
Are there still cheaters playing?
Also undoubtedly.
Should cheaters get a free pass?
Nope. Not in my book. You cheat, you earn millions of dollars for cheating and then you get a free pass? Sorry but fuck you and the needle you made your millions on.

This decision to let the named cheaters wriggle off the hook is Selig's attempt to sweep all of this into the past and lay it all on a few very high profile players when the reality is that PED use in baseball has been rampant and it took place on his watch. Bud Selig is as much to blame for the steroid era as the players who had to do drugs to stay at the top of their game.

Hope Springs Eternal

Tonight is the stateside start to the Major League Baseball season after the odd and unnecessary kickoff in Japan by the A's and Red Sox last week.

Today is a great day for baseball fans everywhere. Because there are no records, there are no sub-.500 teams, there are no cellar-dwellers. And there haven't been any sparkles and fades. Yet.

But some things seem to never change, like, oh I don't know, Nomar, and Schmidt going on the DL for the Dodgers. I don't wish ill upon any individual player unless they suit up for the Dodgers or the Yankees and then I just hope they get hurt enough to miss the season.

I hold out little hope that my San Francisco Giants will be much of a threat aside from their superior pitching talent. Lincecum and Cain are superb pitchers and both are definitely staff-ace quality. Zito should have a better year than last. Lowry is a very solid 4th and Correia is an understated 5th. The lineup the Giants are putting up isn't especially scary in terms of power but they are pretty fast and might surprise teams by playing small ball.

Which reminds me, this will be the first season in a very long time without Barry Bonds. His on-field presence will be missed but the circus that follows his every move will not. I do not deny that he almost certainly used steroids and other cheater drugs but he was, by no stretch of the imagination, the only one and my main complaint against the investigation of Bonds is that he is being used as the poster boy for steroids when he's barely even the tip of the iceberg. But at least Roger "Needleass" Clemens has done his part to take away the spotlight with his ridiculous denials and "they must be misremembering"'s.

And yeah, I do kind of hope that Clemens gets some jail time for his blatant and insane perjury and utter misrepresentation of the facts and reality. And for shooting his wife up with HGH too, that was a major league class act.

But enough of the spotted past of the game. Today is the start of a brand new season, a brand new era and a whole bunch of new stars are poised to leap into the imaginations of children and grown up children everywhere.

Today my Giants are in a tie for first place and that's likely about as close as they'll get this season but I don't mind, I'll be enjoying watching the Yankees lose, the Red Sox win, the Dodgers sparkle and then fade away and all the myriad microdramas that make up a baseball season.

Hot damn, its time for baseball again!

NY lawmaker urges FBI to drop Clemens probe, saying pitcher has suffered enough - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

NY lawmaker urges FBI to drop Clemens probe, saying pitcher has suffered enough even though he hasn't even admitted that he's a big, fat freaking liar who's been using performance enhancing drugs for a long time.

Suffered? He's made millions upon millions of dollars from his lies and cheating.

Investigate him, force him to tell the truth or throw his ass in prison.

Anthony Weiner presents a false dilemma in his reasoning for dropping the investigation, that of the FBI having bigger fish to fry. The falseness here is that the FBI can only do one thing at a time and that they should be pursuing "real" criminals. The reality is very different in that the FBI is a HUGE organization simultaneously performing hundreds of investigations across all strata of society and criminal element. If the investigation of Clemens was exposing our country to a terrorist attack then of course I'd say drop it given that lives are far more important than a cheating baseball jerk. But the patent reality of the situation is that there are plenty of FBI agents to secure our nation AND investigate major cheating and lying in the huge business of professional sports. To say otherwise is to try and obfuscate the truth of the situation.

Letting Clemens off the hook without even his admission of guilt sends a deeply flawed message. To other cheater baseball players, to youth baseball players who looked up to him, to owners who profited from the drug era, to fans who want an honest game again.

Clemens needs to come clean, he needs to admit his guilt, admit his cheating and only then can any kind of relief be discussed.

Calling for the investigation to be abandoned would be damaging to the integrity of baseball and it would be condoning every single microgram of steroids and growth hormones injected into his ass.

Clemens knows the truth from what his twisted and totally unbelievable story has become. He knows he's lying, he knows that what he is doing is underhanded and dirty. Letting him get away with it would taint us all.

Investigate, prosecute, punish, forgive. The crucible that baseball must pass through won't be fun and some stars will be sacrificed in the cleansing, like Bonds and Clemens.

Going to Prison for Pride

Well it would appear that Roger Clemens is going to be investigated for lying to a grand jury, about the most avoidable crime going these days, and may end up in jail for his bloated pride and inability to admit that he's a drug using cheater.

There is very little doubt in my mind that Clemens has been juicing himself to stay competitive and dominant. The witnesses and testimony against him have been damning and directly contradict Clemens' own hard to believe tale and bizarre explanations.

I'm sure of my readers will be thinking about how this relates to my defenses of Barry Bonds in the past. And they'll have a reasonable point. I've long been a defender of Bonds as a fan and as a devil's advocate. But I honestly believe I'd have a different take if Greg Anderson, his trainer, had testified against him, if he'd had corroborating witnesses to contradict his stories and to catch him in lie and fallacy after mistruth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all but positive Bonds cheated, just like the rest of the universe. But the body of evidence against Bonds and the body of evidence against Clemens are two very different animals but they excrete the same PED poop.

If either player plays another game in MLB then I will surprised. Though I'd bet Clemens is the more likely of the two to get a contract even though he is deeply tainted goods at this point.

I admit that I'm rather enjoying watching Roger squirm and try to convince the world that he's right and everyone else is wrong, the evidence is wrong, everyone else's memories are faulty and that he's never even so much as seen a performance enhancing drug much less had multiple injections to revive his flagging power as he aged.

Amy linked to a refutation of the statistically false Clemens Report by the guys who wrote Freakonomics and it pretty clearly and capably shreds the Clemens Report for the tripe that it is. The thing with stats is that it is really easy to see when someone is fudging data to serve their own foregone conclusions, in this case Clemens conclusion is that he never cheated so his defense team massaged and then beat the data until it served their purpose. The only thing is that it is really easy to blow selective data apart with a valid sample, as the Freako boys have done.

Clemens is a cheater, a liar and an underhanded head throwing scumbag. I hope he twists in the wind and then spends a chunk of time behind bars for his ego, pride and patently obvious lying.

Squirm, Rocket, Squirm

It was with delight that I got to listen in to Roger Clemens' speak to the congressional committee investigating illegal performance enhancing drug use in baseball on the way to work this morning. The squirm is palpable and absolutely hilarious.

And the thing is that there are two conclusions to this particular facet of the roid drama playing out. Either Brian McNamee is lying and will be going to prison for perjury or Roger Clemens is lying and will be going to prison for perjury. But McNamee's reason for disclosure is "truer" in that he has everything to lose by lying whereas Clemens has everything to lose by telling the truth. Motivations are very, very important and key to coming to some idea of who's reliable and who's trying to protect a, previous to this, Hall of Fame career. Hint, it ain't the trainer.

As each of the other pieces of the story come out, Andy Pettitte's corroboration, Andy Pettitte's wife's corroboration, the syringes and more, each piece goes further and further to cementing Roger Clemens as both a cheater and a liar.

And it sure is fun watching his big inflated ego bobble around like a balloon in a hurricane trying to stay up and keep from getting skewered. The only thing is that he's already skewered, just nobody has been able to get that bit of information to penetrate his cult-of-personality false reality.

I actually believe that Clemens has convinced himself of his innocence. He's so bought into his story that he no longer thinks its a story, he buys his own bull. The only trouble is that not a single person outside of Roger Clemens buys it. And the end result of all his bluster, attack dog lawyerations and interviews is that he'll have spent millions of dollars to convince no one. And I'm sure he'll still be protesting his innocence to his cellmate.

Rocket Gets Shot Down by Smoking Syringe

McNamee's lawyers say physical evidence confirms Clemens' use of performance-enhancing drugs. Namely McNamee saved the syringes and towels he used when he injected Roger Clemens with PEDs (that's performance enhancing drugs) in 2000 and 2001.

Clemens is still denying all of it in spite of now physical evidence that has his blood, may still have DNA and steroids or HGH in it.

That's what we call GAME OVER. You weren't convincing anyone before and now there's nobody that believes you're clean, Roger. And, because you just testified at length yesterday that you've never, ever done PEDs, you might even be facing an indictment for perjury. Which would be sweet.

Clemens' legacy is already tainted and he's pretty well assured of going down in the Asterisk Wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. And he deserves every bit of smackdown he's going to get.

I bet he wishes he'd stayed retired now.

Named Names in the Mitchell Report

Brace yourself, its a pretty big list. Broken down into three groups: No Doubters, Probablys and Purt Damn Likelys.

Sadly, a good number of players I like(d) are among the named names. I don't know what the impact of the report will be but hopefully the game of baseball will emerge as a better, cleaner sport.

The following players were connected to steroids, either use or possession, in the report:
Chad Allen
Mike Bell
Gary Bennett
Larry Bigbie
Ricky Bones
Kevin Brown
Ken Caminiti
Mark Carreon
Jason Christiansen
Howie Clark
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Jack Cust
Brendan Donnelly
Chris Donnels
Lenny Dykstra
Matt Franco
Ryan Franklin
Eric Gagne
Jason Grimsley
Jerry Hairston
Phil Hiatt
Matt Herges
Glenallen Hill
Todd Hundley
Ryan Jorgensen
Wally Joyner
Mike Judd
David Justice
Chuck Knoblauch
Tim Laker
Mike Lansing
Paul Lo Duca
Exavier "Nook" Logan
Josias Manzanillo
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Bart Miadich
Hal Morris
Daniel Naulty
Denny Neagle
Rafael Palmeiro
Jim Parque
Andy Pettitte
Adam Piatt
Todd Pratt
Stephen Randolph
Adam Riggs
Brian Roberts
F.P. Santangelo
David Segui
Mike Stanton
Ricky Stone
Miguel Tejada
Derrick Turnbow
Mo Vaughn
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White
Jeff Williams
Todd Williams
Kevin Young
Gregg Zaun

The following players were cited under "Alleged Internet Purchases of Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball" in the report:
Rick Ankiel
David Bell
Paul Byrd
Jose Canseco
Jay Gibbons
Troy Glaus
Jose Guillen
Darren Holmes
Gary Matthews Jr.
John Rocker
Scott Schoeneweis
Ismael Valdez
Matt Williams
Steve Woodard

The following players were linked through BALCO in the report:
Marvin Benard
Barry Bonds
Bobby Estalella
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Benito Santiago
Gary Sheffield
Randy Velarde

The Mitchell Report: Alot More Than Just Barry Bonds

Sources: Mitchell Report to name MVPs, All-Stars, won't address amphetamines and here's a link to PDF copy of the report.

Names like Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Grimsley, David Segui, Jose Guillen and Jay Gibbons. Of course, it has just been released so the flood of alleged cheaters will be coming out for the rest of the day and, probably, into next season.

On KNBR they were talking about names that might be on the list but may not be. Guys like Jason Schmidt, Paul O'Neill, Marquis Grissom and a whole bunch of others.

Let's face it, the great American pastime is rife with athletes taking performance enhancing drugs. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. Major League Baseball has a serious drug problem but it isn't just the athletes that are guilty, the owners, managers, trainers, pals and other assorted support personnel are as guilty but will, largely, go unpunished.

Does it diminish my love of the sport? Yeah, maybe just a little bit. Do I hope this is the first major step to cleaning up the game and re-levelling the playing field? Heck yeah.

Not only because PEDs undermine the integrity of the game, which is a big deal, but more so because younger players and kids look up to big leaguers and are getting the wrong message about drugs from them. They are getting the message that using PEDs is okay, that cheating to win and get that big contract is not only acceptable but encouraged. And that goes a long way to undermining the future of sport in America.

If some legacies have to be torched to clean up the sport then so be it. But let's not let the managers and owners get off scot-free. Let's punish every level of guilty party from the minors to the front office.

[Update: The player list originally sent over by my cousin is not the actual player list. I have a copy of the report and will add the named players when I get a chance.]