Two seven timers are in the Mitchell Report, seven-time MVP Barry Bonds, and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens. One has already been given the whitewash, and the other has been the target of sports media vitriol and government investigation for four years. Now, why is that?
I’m watching ESPN, and we got Tim Kurkjian, Peter Gammons, John Kruk and Steve Phillips. All of them are saying the same thing, Clemens has denied it, there’s no proof, McNamee has an agenda, I want to believe him, we have to wait and see….
Unbelievably, they have already confirmed my worst suspicions, that they are ready, willing and able to come up with any reason to excuse Clemens, to defend him, defend his right to due process, and immediately impugn the character of McNamee. The first time they have a chance, they all said that McNamee had an agenda, that he was naming names to avoid jail.
OK, so how come Greg Anderson and Victor Conte, who had plenty of reasons to testify against Bonds, plenty of reasons to detail all of the ways Bonds used illegal performance-enhancing drugs; did not? How come those questions aren’t being asked, and haven’t been? Because Bonds is black? An asshole? Clemens is a hero?
Hypocrites, every one of them. The report isn’t 24 hours old, and we’re already being treated to sob stories about how Clemens and Pettitte are being slimed by a scumbag trying to protect his own ass. Bonds wasn’t slimed by scumbags who could’ve, but that’s not worth talking about.
Just so we’re clear what we’re talking about, here’s what the report says about Clemens:
…. Toward the end of the road trip which included the Marlins series, or shortly after the Blue Jays returned home to Toronto, Clemens approached McNamee and, for the first time, brought up the subject of using steroids. Clemens said that he was not able to inject himself, and he asked for McNamee’s help.
Later that summer, Clemens asked McNamee to inject him with Winstrol, which Clemens supplied. McNamee knew the substance was Winstrol because the vials Clemens gave him were so labeled. McNamee injected Clemens approximately four times in the buttocks over a several-week period with needles that Clemens provided.
…. According to McNamee, during the middle of the 2000 season Clemens made it clear that he was ready to use steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin that McNamee had obtained from Radomski.
McNamee stated that during this same time period he also injected Clemens four to six times with human growth hormone he received from Radomski, after explaining to Clemens the potential benefits and risks of use.
Mitchell is on ESPN defending the testimony of McNamee right now. Schapp asks him how credible the evidence against Clemens is, and he says, “It is the testimony of his personal trainer.” Exactly.
There has never been one, single, credible report, statement or piece of evidence about Bonds that is anything at all like that. Not. One. In fact, there’s nothing in the Mitchell Report that is even close to being as damning. All the Mitchell Report has is a conversation with Peter Magowan. Here’s what there is about Bonds:
…. Peter Magowan told me in an interview that he was in San Diego in February 2004 when he received a telephone call from Bonds to discuss ways to improve the team for the coming season. Magowan said that at the conclusion of the phone call he said to Bonds “I’ve really got to know, did you take steroids?” According to Magowan, Bonds responded that when he took the substances he did not know they were steroids but he later learned they were. Bonds said that he took these substances for a period of time to help with his arthritis, as well as sleeping problems he attributed to concern about his father’s failing health.
To emphasize that he was not hiding anything Bonds added that he used these substances in the clubhouse in the plain view of others. Bonds told Magowan he used these substances for only a short period of time and that they “didn’t work.” Magowan recalled asking Bonds whether this was what he had told the grand jury. Bonds replied yes. Magowan also asked Bonds if he was telling the truth, and Bonds said he was.
Two days after Magowan’s interview, lawyers for Magowan and the Giants calle a member of my investigative staff. Magowan’s lawyer explained that his client misspoke whe he said that Bonds had said, during their February 2004 telephone call, that he later learned the substances he had taken were steroids. According to his lawyer, Magowan could only recall with certainty that (1) Bonds had said he did not knowingly take steroids, and (2) what Bonds said to Magowan during the call was consistent with what Magowan later read in the San Francisco Chronicle about Bonds’s reported grand jury testimony.
Bonds has been investigated for four years, and all we have is his ex-girlfriend telling us he told her he did steroids, and Game of Shadows explaining to us that all of the paperwork obtained at BALCO is, in fact, a list of what Bonds did, in fact, take, even though his name wasn’t on it, neither Victor Conte nor Greg Anderson says that it does, and Bonds denied it, again and again. Just like, by the way, Clemens just did.
The only difference is that the national sports media are falling all over themselves in their efforts to give Clemens the benefit of the doubt; after four years of fucking Bonds over to get back at him for being an asshole.
And as for the report being definitive, Jayson Stark has a number for you to consider:
…. according to Sean Forman, of baseball-reference.com’s amazing play index, 5,148 players have made it into at least one major league box score since 1985, the year Radomski went to work for the Mets.
So that means that precisely 1.67 percent of them made it into this report. Shockingly exclusive group, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah, I’d say that’s a bit thin. The Sports Law Blog is pretty disappointed in the report as well:
….Why does the public and the media continue to impose standards and rules on professional and college athletes no one else would stand for?
The hypocrisy is deafening.
Between innings, we listen to advertisements selling drugs to help us sleep, be less depressed, concentrate in school, have better sex, and degrunge our toe nails.
Colleges make millions off the sweat and hard work of their athletes in an archaic system that makes the Confederacy look like the beacon of free enterprise, all on the overstated promise that if they improve their performance they have a good shot at making millions themselves.
And now we are to be shocked and up in arms that a small minority of professional baseball players may have used artificial means to perform better.
13 Backtalkers
The information on Bonds in this report is more vindicating than damning. Several witnesses say that they obtained the same cream and clear from Anderson and it was not called steroids. In fact, the clear wasn’t labeled a steroid until 2005 and the the cream probably isn’t even strong enough to be a steroid (testosterone cream is not classified as an anabolic steroid). Since the money for this report and the associated government investigations was spent mostly to target Bonds, the lack of evidence is nice. Hope the court case against him is equally lame – consisting only of Novitsky’s testimony of the interviews with Conte and Valente that Novitsky failed to record, an extrapolation that Anderson gave steroids to some other players so must have given them to Bonds (from the report, he had no consistent pattern), and the hearsay testimony of aggrieved parties. If this is the case, there is likely no trial. This is not just wishful thinking. Ryan said they “almost had enough evidence to indict Bonds” before he left. Considering the evidence needed to indict is only enough to persuade 12 of 19 to vote yes with no opportunity for defense, almost having enough evidence is not very much at all.
Also, the Mitchell report relies on very few sources and without the feds/states getting involved with Radomski, Signature Pharmacy, McNamee, and Balco would have what? 3 witnesses? Anyone implying that a player’s absence from the report makes him “clean” is being very silly.
if something is worth saying, it’s worth saying twice
The voice of reason in a sea of hypocricy and sanctimony. Thanks John for your mind.
Now what? Do you institute a strict, new anti-doping regime? Do you go after the players who Mitchell identified. At the very least, game should go on with any asterisks:
http://fourreasonswhy.com/2007/12/14/there-should-be-no-asterisks-in-baseball/
I never really bought the race card angle (fully) until now. This is fucking ridiculous — frankly, there’s MORE reason to doubt Clemens than Bonds. Bonds is saying he took PEDs but didn’t realize it, while Clemens is actually trying to make us believe he did nothing? Even with firsthand testimony against that? If the ESPN staff doesn’t rip Clemens a new one soon, I have to assume on some level it’s subconscious racism. I mean, C’MON!!!!
I know you were one of the ones who disagreed with me back in 2005 when I was attempting to fathom the reason that so many people who were not even baseball fans could muster up so much hatred for a man they did not now, concerning a complex sports medicine issue they knew little, if anything about. It was not so obvious then as it is now. Awesome of you to re-evaluate your opinions. You have my respect for that.
John once again has exposed the sham that is the power structure of MLB. The Mitchell Report and the totally predictable blather from both the broadcast and print media, and others, is driven by envy, elitism, and self-referenced, self-righteousness. Essentially people without, or people who pay no attention to, a moral compass at worst, or a sense of logic and proportion at best.
The dichotomy is that OBM has been extremely consistent with its observations and conclusions during the entire alleged steroids era. This comes not so much from clairvoyance nor some kind of Einstein-like scientific insight, but rather from the observations of an individual who follows the road map of a consistent and viable life-ethic and belief system. In doing so, he has found that difficult and “unconventional” as that may seem according to pop culture, it is the best and surest way to arrive at one’s destination. Accordingly, when watching MLB owners and Mass Media locked in a death dance of bullshit, backstabbing, and Bonds-hating, it comes as no surprise that we end up with is a 304 page waste of paper that took over a year and millions of dollars in the making on one hand. And a straightforward essay that exposes all the fakers who contributed to this affront to one’s intelligence.
Not surprisingly, elitists in mass media and elsewhere, reveal themselves to be as vindictive, hateful, superstitious and small-minded as their predecessors in 17th century Salem Massachusetts. They continue to slime Barry Bonds with hardly any of what could be reasonably passable pseudo-evidence. No testimony against him by other than a discredited former girl friend. Yet these same freaks seek to exonerate and excuse Roger Clemens in spite of an abundance of the so-called pseudo evidence put forth in Mitchell’s Report. The accusations against Bonds in this report are as mentioned previously, a rehash of the Fanny-Wadda, Williams Fairy Tale.
The report was a farce. John did a masterful job of breaking down the pieces and putting them into the context of the real picture. A morally bankrupt sports media and a vacuous, insipid greedy Commissioner. The two have relentlessly sought to destroy the players union, discredit player agents’, and dehumanize players. And until the day, fans understand that dynamic, they will continue to wonder why players do not for the most part, cozy up to media, fans, and the general public. Or when they do speak, it is in bland cliches in an atmosphere of mistrust and barely tolerable antipathy. It is an adversary relationship. And it is going to get a lot worse. Media and the Commissioner and the scurrilous player-hating Mitchell have sought to slander ALL of the players through insinuation and out and out misrepresentation through this whole process.
And lost in all of it was any serious discussion of Sports Medicine which is where this all should have been focused in the first place. Ridiculous people for ridiculous times. Fools. All of them. How ironic that the people who slime the game are people who cannot play it. That is the simple truth.
Its sad, I pretty much expected Clemens would get a free pass. That’s the world we live in, I guess. Pretty pathetic really. Jason Giambi says I’m sorry but doesn’t say for what. But even with that everybody knows what he meant, and now people go on like he didn’t really do anything wrong. Whereas had Bonds actually done the same as Giambi, the media and idiot public would be turning him into a bigger form of a living Satan then they already have done over the past 5 years.
please, go to foxsports.com and see that both kriegle and rosenthal still dont get it
the fact remains, that these high and mighty protectors of the faith did nothing when the roids issue was first being talked about.
they all continue to look at baseball being the only pure sport, despite evidence to the contrary
the sport has never been pure
[...] e chigliak <info@federalbaseball.com> created a sweet baseball article today.Here’s a mini excerpt.according to Sean Forman, of baseball-reference.com’s amazing play index, 5148 players have made it into at least one major league box score since 1985, the year Radomski went to work for the Mets. So that means that precisely 1.67 … [...]
When Steroids Are Banned, Only Cheaters Have Them…
The real heroes in this story are the players who were not afraid to take steroids because of some old-fashioned notion of fair play….
It sounds good! I do agree here that heroes in this story are the Players who performed real.Rockets tickets
Very helpful. Thanks. Can’t wait to see more from this site.