Fans boycott MLB over steroids

A group of New Jersey fans is attempting to get steroids out of baseball by proposing an MLB boycott. You can check out their initiative here: www.baseballfansgiveback.com

Selig still twisting

Maury Brown rips Bud Selig for Bud's stance of "What, not me" with regard to steroid culpability. He then goes a step further in criticizing Selig's minor league steroid numbers from the past couple of seasons.

Secondly, I took Selig to task for this comment in an earlier AP article:

“What I could do unilaterally, I did almost immediately,” Selig said, pointing to a minor league testing program started in 2001.

Fewer than 1 percent of minor leaguers now test positive for banned drugs, down from 9.1 percent in 2001, he said.

The figures being cited by Selig regarding the minor league tests were what I examined and thought might not be fully accurate, based upon the sudden influx of players out of the Dominican Summer League that caused positive PED suspensions to rise of 128 percent from 2007 to 2008 in minor league suspensions.

Could the players in the DSL under the minor league testing program be included as part of Selig’s comments? Reached for comment, MLB spokesman Rich Levin confirmed that Selig’s comments were in regard to players in the minor leagues outside of the Dominican and Venezuelan Summer Leagues.

Based upon this, it is clear that MLB’s next frontier on eradicating PEDs from baseball centers on associated leagues in South America and the Caribbean. If not for the 49 players from the DSL and VSL suspensions, only 17 players stateside would have been reported as suspended for PEDs, a decline of 41 percent from 2007 to 2008, as opposed to the 128 percent increase.

Selig is going to go down as the George W. Bush of baseball commissioners -- always fumbling, always spinning. He's as guilty as anyone with regard to the steroid years. He was in charge, and it happened on his watch. Enough said.

All we have to Fear is Fehr

Donald Fehr says the "steroid problem" has been fixed?

"Everybody understands that there were things which happened in the early part of the decade, which we wish hadn't, that that's not the case anymore," Fehr said Monday at the Florida Marlins' camp in Jupiter, Fla., the first stop on his annual tour of spring training sites.

"We fixed the problem and we need to look forward, as (commissioner) Bud (Selig) has said many times.

"So far as I know, there is not a hint or suggestion that there is anything inappropriate or that it's not functioning right or that it isn't doing the job in 2005, '06, '07 or '08," Fehr added. "And somehow that gets lost in what I can basically call the sensationalism around what happened five years ago."

As long as the chemists want money and the designer drugs stay ahead of the tests, a number of players will be doing steroids. We'll probably only catch their usage when newer tests become available.

Romero saga strange

Not only did MLB suspend Phillies pitcher J.C. Romero for a banned steroid that wasn't on the bottle of his supplement of choice, the league also attempted to stop him from playing in the World Series.

But if MLB had its druthers, Romero never would have thrown a pitch in the postseason. A first-time positive test carries a 50-game suspension, which may be appealed. Aware that an appeal process would last well into the postseason and push any suspension back to opening day 2009, baseball took an unusual step and offered to cut Romero's suspension in half to prevent him from playing in the postseason.

"We generally do not negotiate discipline in the drug area," Manfred said. "If he appealed it would go beyond the World Series. We offered to reduce the suspension to avoid him being in the World Series.

"I think a scientist will tell you that the [banned] substance was no longer in [Romero's] system, but the appearance of it - you prefer to avoid. With any drug program, the goal is to remove the athlete as quickly as possible."

Asked if he believed the Phils' World Series title was tainted, Manfred said "No."

Why all the odd and special treatment in this case? Baseball never seemed quick to suspend a player in the past. Appeals almost always drag on for days and weeks.

Mitchell: drugs are down

Former Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell says he believes drugs are down in baseball, but doesn't believe they're necessarily down and out.

"I would be very doubtful that it is completely clean in the sense nobody is using," he said. "You don't know whether this is a temporary response because of the attention it's gotten and whether over time it will begin to resume an increase. I think that's unlikely given the aggressive nature of the response, but it's something you have to be continuously concerned about."

Mitchell's report, while fairly detailed, left a lot to be desired. He is correct not to assume anything. Drugs may be down for a period of time, but the next designer steroids are out or will be out, and if players tried them in the past with general success, they'll be looking to them again in the future.

Canseco all over the place

Reading Jose Canseco's quotes on wishing he hadn't come forward to name steroid users is probably the lament of a broken man wishing he hadn't heaped some of his problems on others.

Canseco, however, did the right thing in helping to expose a major problem in baseball. If Canseco did one thing right in his drug-abused baseball life and career, it was coming forward when few others would. There's no denying that.

Clemens unlikely to pitch in '09

Roger Clemens says he has "no desire" to play baseball in 2009, but the only reason he's not interested is he can't guarantee that he can survive a full season at the MLB level. He did leave the slightest amount of wiggle room, but this sounds like a player who doesn't want to quit knowing he has to head toward the sunset.

“I don’t know if I will ever say no. I would have to know that I could perform at a high level and that my body would be able to hold up.”

Clemens, an 11-time All-Star and seven-time Cy Young award winner, said he did not feel he could play any longer.

“I think I said a long time ago that I’m not a quitter,” Clemens said. “I’m never going to quit. I think I’m just going to walk away. I think I will never be too far from the game.”

There's some poetic justice in that first statement. You know, the part about having to perform at a high level and a body breaking down. Clemens seemed to find the fountain of youth as an older player, and now with his name forever attached to steroids the comments contain an ironic twist.

Good luck, Roger, and good bye.