Move over Barry Bonds

[StarOfAfrica2]

Company's coming man, and I dont think your table is big enough.  You are about to have a whoooooooole bunch of friends that didnt want anything to do with you before.

Baseball's drug scandal just got a whole lot worse -- or a whole lot better. Or maybe both.

According to federal investigators, in April federal agents confronted Jason Grimsley, a 38-year-old journeyman pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, with evidence that he'd received two "kits" of human growth hormone in the mail. Mr. Grimsley handed over the HGH and admitted that he'd been a longtime user of HGH, steroids and amphetamines. And he admitted a lot more: Mr. Grimsley fingered other players as illegal-drug users (their names are currently blacked out in an affidavit, but just wait); discussed doctors who could supply HGH; said that until this year, clubhouse coffee pots were labeled "leaded" or "unleaded" depending on whether they were amphetamine-laced; and said Latino players and California players were major sources of amphetamines.

http://www.azcentral.com/pdfs/060706grimsley.pdf  (copy of affidavit)

Yesterday, federal agents searched Mr. Grimsley's house for six hours; their warrant indicates they were hunting for "any and all records showing contact or relationship with any and all amateur or professional athletes, athletic coaches or athletic trainers" related to illegal drug use and purchases.

There was good news of a sort for baseball in the affidavit: Mr. Grimsley said he stopped using steroids after baseball put a new testing regimen in place, and his detailing of the amphetamine culture was past-tense. But that just puts HGH even more squarely in the spotlight: At this point urine tests won't detect HGH -- only blood testing has a chance to do that, and baseball's current testing plan doesn't include blood tests.

"[T]his essentially announces -- to Congress, to Bud Selig, to the union, to all of us -- that players were well aware that they essentially had a free pass to use HGH," Jayson Stark explains on ESPN.com. "And we now know that at least one player took that free pass and never thought twice about it. Not until the feds showed up at his front door, at least."

The feds couldn't have found a better-placed player as a starting point for an investigation that could lead everywhere. Mr. Grimsley (who was released yesterday by the D'Backs, reportedly at his request) came up with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1989, eyeballed as the rise of the steroid era; he's also played for the Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Kansas City Royals, California Angels, Baltimore Orioles and the Diamondbacks, and spent minor-league stints with the Houston Astros, Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers.

"Grimsley's All-Teammate Team would go on longer than his federal affidavit," Mr. Stark writes. "It would be a roster hundreds of names long -- many of them really famous names, players who have never been associated with any kind of drug use. In other words, if any player in baseball were to start naming names, Grimsley would be one guy who would scare the spikes off the many silent users who thought they would escape detection forever. Well, we know now that he has named those names."

Indeed. In the New York Post, Mike Vaccaro compares Mr. Grimsley to Henry Hill, the well-connected mob foot soldier at the center of the book "Wiseguy" and the movie "Goodfellas."

Mr. Vaccaro writes that "Grimsley's journeyman career has brought him into some of the most notorious clubhouses in the game, teams that have long been shrouded with whispers: the Phillies of the early '90s. The Indians of the mid-'90s. The Orioles of the past few years. And, most compelling of all, the Yankees of 1999 and 2000. The Yankees' eyes have already been blackened thanks to Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, whose tenures didn't coincide with Grimsley's. If some of those blacked-out names belong to people who wore pinstripes with Grimsley in '99 and '00 -- years that both ended with Yankees championships -- then justice demands that those who wanted to slap asterisks all over Bonds' records will have to take a similar blue pencil to the Yankees' hallowed history. And wouldn't that ever be fun."

Baseball's Henry Hill, says Mr. Vaccaro, "is clearing his throat, even if it means he gets to live the rest of his life like a schnook, and that means plenty of other former Phillies, former Royals, former Orioles, former Indians and former Diamondbacks get to live the next few weeks and months like terrified perps-in-waiting. Get your helmet on. This is going to get ugly."

Why would Mr. Grimsley use? In SI.com, Tom Verducci goes back to 1998, when Mr. Grimsley was a 31-year-old minor-leaguer whose career earnings from baseball were less than $1 million.

"And then something happened," he writes. "Grimsley became a different pitcher. A better pitcher through chemicals, at least according to the IRS affidavit filed after his two-hour sing-a-long with a federal agent in April. The affidavit mentions that Grimsley turned to Deca Durabolin, a hardcore steroid, to recover from shoulder surgery in 2000. The affidavit does not specify if that was his original entree into the world of performance-enhancing drugs. But the document includes admissions from Grimsley that he also used human growth hormone (HGH), amphetamines and Clenbuterol in addition to the steroids. The chemicals kept him in the major leagues. Was the $19,000 or so he spent on HGH alone worth it? The guy who was stuck in Class AAA Buffalo at 31 went on to earn $9 million in the big leagues. His ERA dropped from 5.39 to 4.21. His hits and walks per inning dropped from 1.67 to 1.44. He wasn't a star, but Grimsley was good enough to get regular work for the first time in his life."

(If you're thinking that situation might describe an enormously long list of middling players, you're right. Get ready for a long summer.)

In the San Jose Mercury News, Mark Purdy considers a longstanding complaint from Barry Bonds' defenders: Why has everybody been acting like Bonds is the only player under suspicion? Why not look into other players?

"Those people should be careful about their wish list," Mr. Purdy writes. "Because after this week's events in suburban Phoenix, it appears baseball is in for a long, horrible and scandalous summer -- with Bonds still the centerpiece, but part of a much, much larger picture. Before, if baseball's ongoing drug drama were an album cover, it would be Bonds with one guitar, sort of like Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Now, that cover is on the way to resembling the sprawling 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' cover, featuring Bonds in the front row but surrounded by dozens of faces, desert landscaping, coffee pots and a revolving police gum ball light."

So, two key questions: What will Bud Selig do? And what will Don Fehr do? Will baseball's commissioner take strong action against HGH -- demanding that players give blood tests, for instance, and promising to retain those samples until a reliable test for HGH is found? Will Mr. Fehr accept a tougher testing regimen in an effort to clean up the game, stonewall behind lofty orations about privacy, or acquiesce to the former after the latter gets him nowhere?

"Baseball must now begin testing for human growth hormone," writes Richard Justice in the Houston Chronicle. "There's no other choice. … If baseball does nothing, if the Major League Players Association refuses to agree to testing for HGH, the game will be announcing that it's condoning cheating, that it was never really serious about getting rid of performance-enhancing drugs. There's no other way to certify Albert Pujols and Roger Clemens and every other player is clean. Otherwise, every player who does something spectacular will be under the umbrella of suspicion. Until now, Selig has resisted. He hasn't liked the idea of blood tests and has hoped a urine test for HGH would become a reality. Union leaders have been adamant in their opposition to blood testing. Tough luck. Time's up."

[101ABN]

Barry Bonds... who is that??

[Sandman]

It's not cheating if they just change the rules.

Make it all legal. Dope all they want 'cause that's what the fans want anyway. Bigger, better, faster, more.

[Sixpence]

Originally posted by Sandman
It's not cheating if they just change the rules.

Make it all legal. Dope all they want 'cause that's what the fans want anyway. Bigger, better, faster, more.

That's what makes me laugh, and don't get me wrong, cause i'm no fan of barry bonds(his dad was an inspiration to me as a young ball player), but it is so popular to burn the witch these days. All these sports writers are acting so surprised, like they knew nothing of what's been going on the last 10-15 years, it's a joke. And they are the ones crucifying the ballplayers in their columns, it's laughable.

They pulled in the fences, juiced the ball and juiced the players to bring excitement to the sport to bring the fans back. And every owner and sports writer(and most fans) knew what was going on.

An asterisk next to Bonds name? The whole sport deserves an asterisk

[Debonair]

**** ball

[WhiteHawk]

Yea, it looks like albert pujols is in the ring also:( .  He could have brought back the legitamcay of the game.