Posted on 10/16/2007 3:26:27 PM PDT by commish
NEW YORK (AP) - Baseball investigator George Mitchell has received an extensive paper trail documenting performance-enhancing drugs sent to players by former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, a person familiar with the probe said Monday.
Among the documents Mitchell and his staff have obtained are invoices detailing the substances sent to players, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Mitchell hasn't authorized details to be made public.
Mitchell likely will issue his report on steroids in baseball by the end of the year, lawyer Thomas Carlucci said during a conference call with club officials Friday. Carlucci told them they should assume the report will name names.
Radomski pleaded guilty in April to distributing steroids to major league players from 1995-2005 and laundering money, and he was required as part of a plea agreement to cooperate with Mitchell, a former Senate Majority Leader who is a director of the Boston Red Sox.
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(Excerpt) Read more at msn.foxsports.com ...
There will propabably be players from our favorite teams and some big names that may really shock us.
I hole MLB is ready for this, I have the feeling this is going to be a very long dark winter for baseball.
If MLB is Smart, any player whose name appears on the report and has corroborating evidence to support that inclusion will be immediately suspended from baseball for the 2008 season, and possibly for life pending the full outcome of the investigation.
Only then will baseball be able to emarge from the steroid cloud, and begin to heal and recover.
Clemens has got to turn up on the list, methinks.
Somebody needs to tell George it’s too late. He was supposed to keep Bonds from breaking the record, it was all for show and he blew it.
It will be interesting to see which players suddenly announce thier “retirement” from baseball during November.
I think you will be surprised at the number of no-name players on the list. You figure they are looking for any edge to stay in the major leagues so they actually might have had more incentive to use steroids. There will be big names though.
I have it on good authority that as far as naming names go, record-holders and hall of famers need not worry.
It's all about frying the little fish, getting a lot of sympathetic press and quietly sweeping the problem under the rugs.
“It’s all about frying the little fish, getting a lot of sympathetic press and quietly sweeping the problem under the rugs.”
Except that there’s this problem with keeping the so-called ‘little fish’ quiet once they have been outed. They ain’t gonna take the hit alone, knowing what they know. Also, do you really think that the report will hold any credibility whatsoever if Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, and many of the other obvious juicers aren’t listed?
The report won’t hold any credibility one way or the other. It was always a hollow gesture designed to make it look like the league cared, and if they got lucky to find a reason to kick Bonds out of the sport before he broke the home run record. They didn’t manage to kick Bonds out and the league doesn’t actually care. It’s a dog and pony show.
“It’s a dog and pony show”
Actually, it’s a tweener. Both the league and the union know they are in a bad spot on this issue. And their hope is that they can drag things out and people will ultimately lose interest in the investigations. Problem is, people remain very interested in all this, the records in baseball matter, it’s ridiculously obvious that so many of the players are juiceheads, and still in this country there are enough people who find fault with that. Add to this the agendas of journalists looking to break big stories and write books, politicians looking to score points, the illegality of trafficking in these drugs which keeps the authorities involved, and the information that has already been uncovered but hasn’t been released, this thing is going to be a mess. And up to now, the players have kept that mouths shut. They won’t, indefinitely. And wait til the scope focuses on football. You can shut that whole game down the day that happens. Baseball is the church choir compared to football.
They’re not actually in a bad spot on the issue though, that’s the funny part. Sure the chattering classes give them a lot of crap but the populace, as demonstrated with attendance and TV ratings, don’t care. The people weren’t interested in the issue before the “investigation” started, it might be ridiculously obvious most of the players are juiced but it’s equally obvious most of the fans don’t care, the records in baseball don’t matter any more than anybody else’s records.
It’s not going to hit football half as hard as it hit baseball because football actually made it against the rules in the 80s. Baseball, more specifically the MLBPA, made a big show of it not being against the rules for a long time. That’s what caused this situation, they invited the scrutiny. Football made it against the rules long before anybody actually cared, sure their testing system is a joke but they keep it all quiet by nailing the occasional player and suspending them. Football made a show of going after the problem before anybody cared, while baseball made a show of not caring while the world learned to care. That’s what this investigation is all about, trying to rewrite history, trying to establish that the MLB actually does care. But of course in typical form the MLB blew their timing, because once again the world doesn’t care.
Only the press cares, and even they are starting to lose interest because they’re finally noticing that the audience is changing the channel whenever the issue comes up. If there wasn’t this investigation periodically giving the press something to talk about the issue would already be dead, it functionally died in the weeks after Bonds broke the record. But they had this stupid investigation going on which needs to be finished, the people HAVE lost interest, heck just look at how many replies this thread has gotten and you can see how little the general population cares about the issue.
I disagree with a few of your thoughts. First, just because attendance and ratings are strong in baseball doesn’t lend to the conclusion that the fan-base doesn’t care about steroids. If I continue being involved in the political process in America, continue voting and continue arguing for my ideas, that doesn’t mean I’m happy with the direction we’re taking or happy with the increasingly inept Republican sellouts. It’s just that I think it’s important. There are a multitude of reasons why baseball remains popular. You could even argue that the focus on performance enhancing drugs has drummed up interest in the game, as people are watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop. But regardless, baseball has always been a popular draw, with the only hits taken when they have shut the sport down due to labor disputes.
You mention that people weren’t interested in this issue before this investigation started. EVERYONE in the game and following the game is interested in this story, that’s why it has the legs it does. This issue has been on the front burner for the better part of a decade, and it’s picking up steam now, not losing steam. And when all these names get released in November/December, it will be a huge story.
Football is increasingly seen as a freak show and there is little magic to the history of the game or its records, so the focus on steroids in the NFL is less than what is evident in baseball. But still, the investigations will uncover the football players as well, and the authorities will have a tough time singling out baseball players and Marion Jones, but not football players.
Politics and sports are two vastly different things. People who follow politics tend to be innately unhappy with what’s going on in them, that’s what draws them to it. People who follow sports tend to enjoy it. So that’s a total apples and oranges situation. The last time the MLB had a strike it really irritated the fans, we know it irritated the fans because attendance, ratings and revenue dropped. Those trend numbers reversed when the steroid driven home run derby started, and as the steroid “scandal” has played out the numbers have stayed good.
But the story DOESN’T have legs. Again look at this thread, this is the third day it’s been up and it doesn’t even have a dozen replies. No legs. The issue has spent most of the time on the back burner, it went front burner when Bonds got close to the record, even kin of boiled a little the week he broke the record, but now it’s cooled off and gone to the back page. Really how many stories were there about steroid in baseball between in the months between Bonds breaking the record and this press release? Two, three?! That is not under any circumstances a front burner story with legs, that’s a back burner story that even the press is losing interest in.
A December release of the report will coincide with the NFL playoff hunt, NCAA bowl season, and Vick’s sentencing. The report will be “lucky” to be front page news for more than 1 day. It’ll be the talk of every sports news organ for 1 day, and then it will go away. Very smart timing actually by MLB, put the report up against a ton of non-baseball news as far away from any major dates in baseball as possible.
Football is seen as a freak show, which is part of why any steroid scandal in the sport won’t matter. People have seen them as extra-human for a long time. There’s no magic to the history of ANY sport, any magic is put there by the worshipers who carefully keep themselves blinded to various meathook realities of professional sports. This “investigation” has no meaning to any sport, it is not tied to any legal authority and won’t e usable as evidence in any legal investigation, it will single out baseball because it is an MLB investigation and if it goes after any other sport it will be ridiculed as an attempt to deflect and obfuscate. Now the Balco investigation probably will hit football players, but the NFL knows how to handle it, anybody implicated will be suspended pending trial and anybody convicted will be suspended for life and they’ll wash their hands of the whole thing. The NFL knows how to handle this, suspend them and shut up, more player games have been lost in the NFL do to punishment from the league during the course of MLB’s mighty investigation than in MLB, which really shows how pathetic the whole MLB effort is when you consider they play 10 times as many games.
Wow, trying real hard to soften the impact of this whole thing, makes me wonder why.
You could say that investigations into all of Clinton’s transgressions had no legs, but the undercurrent continued until enough evidence was available via the Lewinsky episodes, and suddenly there was an impeachment. Your claims about the public not caring about steroids are interestingly similar to the claims made by the left during that whole period. Just continue to put the concept out there so as to discourage people from their continuing interest.
Baseball’s records clearly do have some magic. If you could watch Cal Ripken break Gehrig’s record and not think there was any significant national interest in that moment, then I don’t know why I’m wasting time arguing with you, your agenda is overriding your commitment to the truth. The very fact that Barry Bonds took so much heat over the past several years was in large part due to the public’s understanding that he was going to break Hank Aaron’s home run record and was doing so in a phony manner. No public interest in those events, are you kidding me?
Regarding the legal system supposedly not being involved in these investigations, clearly they are, and the threat of trafficking indictments has led to these athletes giving up information on others. Bonds may be indicted on perjury charges sometime in the next year for testimony related to Balco.
Don’t know where you are coming from on this issue, better yet, don’t know why.
I’m not trying to soften anything and there’s nothing to wonder about. This issue doesn’t have legs, it hasn’t had legs for months, if there wasn’t an idiotic psuedo-investigation to be wrapped up there’d be nothing reported now. It’s time to come back to reality, reality is this will be post 14 on this thread and over half of them are you and me, this issue has no legs, the steroid scandal in baseball is over, has been over for months, nobody cares. None of the sports networks are even talking about it anymore, it’s all over.
All your attempts to link this to political reality are silly. You’ve gone past apples and oranges, you’re now comparing fruits and minerals.
Actually the vast majority of the world didn’t give a damn about Ripken breaking Gehrig’s record, like all the other records in sports the majority of Americans don’t care. The only magic in sports history is put there by sports fans, who are actually the minority of the country. Bonds took all the heat he did because he’s a jerk who managed to irritate every single sports journalist on the planet and then he handed them a golden opportunity to exact their revenge. But by the time he broke the record most of the journalists were even admitting that they were the only people that cared, there simply was not the vast public outcry.
Bonds has been supposedly about to be indicted for over a year. Don’t hold your breath on that front.
Where I’m coming from is reality. Go to ESPN there are ZERO stories about this impending report on the MLB page, same at Fox Sports, SI, and every other sports news organ out there. If this was half the story you’re saying it is they be filled with speculation on which names will be named. But instead nobody cares, nobody on ESPN cares, nobody on FR cares, nobody freaking cares. The why is that I’m a defender of reality, when I see people living in their own world and insisting it’s real I have a need to tap them on the shoulder and point them towards the real reality. Maybe people should care about this issue, it could be a horrible statement on the morality of this nation that nobody cares, but that’s the reality, nobody gives a crap. That’s why you and I are the only people on this thread for 2 days now, it has no legs, the report will come out in December and nobody will care, it will barely over power football news for 24 hours. That’s reality, good bad or otherwise that’s how things are in the real world, the mighty MLB “investigation” is a stupid dog and pony show that means nothing, it meant nothing the minute it was announced, it means nothing now, it will mean nothing when the finally release the stupid thing.
“Go to ESPN, there are ZERO stories about this impending report on the MLB page.”
Wow, now the agenda is so extreme you’ve lost your vision. I just went to ESPN.com, MLB page. Right among the front 10 articles is a headline “Brooklyn raid nets $7.2 million in Human Growth Hormone”, and the article references the Mitchell investigation. When you go just below these first few articles, under “More News”, TWO of the first THREE articles listed on ESPN.com have to do with the steroid investigation. First one, ‘Union says Mitchell didn’t share information on evidence’, second one, ‘Mitchell gets paper trail from Ex-Mets aide’.
Are you kidding me? And it’s the same on other sports sites as well, what are you looking at?
“Actually, the vast majority of the world didn’t care about Ripken.....” That’s clownish, now you need to stretch your argument to include Saudi nationals and African pygmies to dilute the audience interest factors. You’ve lost all credibility on this issue. But hey, keep pumping those pom poms for all these juiceheads, who you think are so commendable, whose law-breaking behavior you find no fault with.
That wasn’t there last time I looked. I went to all those sites did text searches for “steroid” and “investigat” and got nothing, it wasn’t there. Guess a couple of arrest can change things.
There’s nothing clownish about it. The non-sportsfan part of the world, which is the majority, doesn’t give a crap about any sports record. You’re committing the great fallacy of the fan, you think that because YOU care than mean EVERYONE cares. The reality is that baseball fans and some general sports fans care about baseball records, and the rest of the world doesn’t. That’s just simple reality, most people in this country are not fans of any sport, we’re at best 10 to 20% of the population, the other 80% doesn’t give a damn who has what record in which sport or who they took it from. And why should they, things in the sports world, much like things in any other subsection of the entertainment world, don’t effect things outside of itself. Nothing outside of sports changed one bit when Ripken broke that record, nothing changed outside of sport when Bonds broke his records, and people who don’t care about baseball, which would include at least 240 million of your fellow American, don’t care about baseball’s record book.
Wow have you gone over the deep end, first you get personal, I’m not pom poming for ANYBODY, then you LIE about what I said, I never said I had no problem with their behavior. Stick with the facts and don’t get personal. Here’s the facts:
this story doesn’t matter, it never has it never will.
And if you think it has legs then you need to explain why his story:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1913023/posts
about a dead actress who hasn’t made a movie in 20 years got 75 posts in under 8 hours while this mighty “investigation” has generated 16 in 3 days. I’ve told you the answer, no it’s time for you to accept reality, NOBODY CARES.
And if you reply again it better be insult and lie free, I will not tolerate liars especially not about me.
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