Just got boston.com’s breaking news alert that the three Sox players are/were: Gagne, Clemens, and Mo Vaughn. Gagne did fuck all for us this year, and Mo and Clemens are long gone.
So glad that none of the Idiots or core players were named. It feels good to know that the guys I rooted for aren’t cheaters… at least as far as we know.
Cheesesteak, all of the guys who used 'roids should be on the same level as Bonds. I mean, it’s like Pete Rose parsing which games he bet on. It doesn’t matter. They cheated. Now the baseball community has to reconcile the way they’ve treated Bonds (and to a lesser extent, Palmeiro and McGuire) with these other guys.
And I think this makes Bonds look like a stand-up guy. He probably knew other guys were doing 'roids, but he never said, “Hey, why don’t you do some research on these other guys?” Baseball idiots have been acting like he’s the only one that’s been naughty… all 30 teams had players implicated.
I really expect more to made out of this in the upcoming days. He took a lot of abuse when he released his book and it seems that he was right on the money.
Ugh, I’m disappointed that Varitek isn’t there. Then again, I think Mitchell is a wee bit too close to the Red Sox for me to accept that he’s being 100% thorough when it comes to them.
Not necessarily. Not, for example, if every fifth guy in the league is doing it and none of your peers ever has or will be prosecuted (or otherwise punished) for it.
This is slightly off topic to this thread, but I didn’t think it warranted a brand new thread.
I think the gist of the report is an excellent idea. I hope it accomplishes the task of cleaning up steroids and making the sport less reliant on illegal harmful pharmaceuticals. Mostly, for the future health of the players involved. If they try to keep it out, players who would otherwise be averse to harming their bodies won’t do it, because they won’t feel the pull of HAVE to do it just to keep up with everyone else. I think the idea of the study is a noble one, and I hope it works.
But, I do not understand how naming names goes in anyway to accomplish this goal. It creates great gossip, and it might turn into finger pointing, as well. “I was named, but I can say for a fact that so and so was also shooting.” But, it does nothing to bring the issue further along. Since it would be impossible to name every player who used steroids over the yeas. I feel like it would have been wiser and more productive to relate the anecdotes about how each of the players acquired the drugs in the report without naming any individual players. Sure, people would speculate about who was who, but the report itself would be about How the drugs are obtained, and where to stop it. It would be about institutional mistakes in allowing the drugs to be so easy to obtain and continue to use. Mistakes made both by the union and the MLB. Instead of creating a feeding frenzy of who was named and who wasn’t named and who should have been named… I don’t think a report that didn’t name names would be as popular a news story, but I do think it would have an overall more positive affect.
I disagree. I think naming names is important. The whole damn thing went on for so long because everybody knew that there was really no downside. Nobody had ever really been hurt by it even if everybody “knew” they did it. Within the last year with Barry Bonds asterisk talk, McGwire being denied first ballot were the only real punishments, and they are utterly weak vs a multi-million dollar contract. Bonds being federally indicted is a mega-jump in accountabilty of course, but still players will likely be of the mindset,“well only one guy got caught, but he was a freakin asshole, and pushed it beyond reason”
Now that names are named, I hope punishements are forthcoming. Not entirely out of vengance, but I will admit I do have feelings that way, but because the game will suck while it is dirty. And all the processes in the world won’t stop drug cheating. But if players see there are tangible punishments for even doing it once, then that may have some effect.
I would be surprised if any punishments will be forthcoming from this results of the study in this report. The names are out there the same way the names were out there after Canseco’s book, or after the BalCo thing with Bonds, or after Grimsley initially got caught. It seems to me that baseball would have a major fight on their hands to punish everyone on this list. Whch is why I think they would be better served to close the holes that exist now, and move forward as best they can.
I’m really disappointed about** Gagne** and **Lo Doca ** because both of those guys brought so much joy to Dodger fans during the height of their careers. Although I haven’t read the report to see when they supposedly engaged in these activities. Regardless, I’m sad to see them associated with such a negative aspect of the game.
Actually I’ve just skimmed through a good chunk of the Mitchell report. While a lot of it is based on say, Kirk Radomski’s allegations many of Radomski’s allegations are supported by multiple canceled checks for thousands of dollars each made out to him personally by players.
Furthermore, one thing Mitchell does very well is explain that the argument of “they weren’t against the rules until 2002” is patently false. All the way back in 1971, it became part of baseball rules that the commissioner could discipline players for using prescription medication without a proper prescription. This means that guys who were juicing in 1995 or 1992 or 1985 or 2001, were, in fact, going against the rules of baseball.
From the Mitchell report:
Now, I think it can be acknowledged that prior to the 2002 basic agreement and the following revisions to baseball’s steroid policy which eventually introduced the 50-game first offense penalty, steroid use was not investigated or ever punished. But, it was still against the rules all the way back to 1971, unless the players in question were using the steroids for a valid medical reason with a valid prescription. Even if they had a prescription, which many of them did (some written by dentists) if they weren’t legitimate prescriptions, that means they were still violating the rules.
On the off chance they had a legitimate prescription (as some are indeed written for these substances) using them as a performance enhancing tool would clearly not be following said valid prescription–and that would be a violation of the rules as well.
We can hold the MLBPA and the Commissioner’s office somewhat responsible for not enforcing the rules up until they agreed on a specific punishment regime for steroids, but just because no such testing/punishment regime was in place doesn’t excuse players for both breaking the law and the rules (as they had stood since 1971.)
I loved Gagne but I have to admit I snickered when I saw the copy of gagne’s package. You couldn’t be a little more secretive. Does it make anybody else a bit curious that it came right to dodger stadium?
