Yes, the Berlin Wall surrounding who did what when with respect to clear liquids and creams is now starting to crumble. Click here to read the New York Daily News' story on an FBI investigation, a guy who supplied Jose Canseco and who just might have aided Mark McGwire too.
Interesting quote from the article:
"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State
lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?"
says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine.
"You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the
investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we
were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the
thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players,
we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."
Which appears to suggest that more people than Ken Caminiti and Jason Giambi (and also Jeremy Giambi) used steroids. Many more. Remember Jim Bouton's prescient quote from Ball Four about how if you could invent a pill that would guarantee a pitcher a 20-win season even if it would take five years off his life, he'd take it? Well, what do you think? Pitchers and catchers? Power hitters and strikeout artists?
I have blogged extensively on this topic, commenting on the congressional investigation here and here, writing my epic poem "Say It Ain't So, Jose", commenting on baseball's closing of the ranks on this issue, wondering about the alleged apology of Jason Giambi, talking about the knowledge of the Yankees about Giambi before they signed him to his big contract, criticizing the mainstream media for missing the entire story of steroid usage, praising USA Today's Hal Bodley for admitting they did, and forecasting (over a month ago) that the whole mess is only going to get worse -- it will.
So what's next in this drama?
It's hard to say. Reports yesterday were that the Lords of Baseball were negotiating with Congress as to who will actually testify. It's probably the case that most in Congress get their news from Fox, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Today you can be sure they're reading the New York Daily News.
And they probably aren't liking what they're reading. Given that the members of the Senate and House usually respond to public outcries and pollster-advised potential public outcries, it's probably a good guess that those negotiations will take a different turn.
For the worse.
Baseball is a game of numbers, a game of statistics. Baseball games have nine innings.
But something tells me that it's the Fifth that the Lords of Baseball and the Lords of the Players Union are really worried about.
2 comments:
Nice post. You and me are probalby inthe minority. I want Congress to investigate this. From what i heard most people do not citing that have other issues to tackle, let baseball take care of itself. Fact is MLB or the union want the players names out there exposing the recent records as a lie. This is one time I am for Congress being involved. Lets clean this up.
Actually, I'm not totally sure how I come out on this. On the one hand, I'm not a huge fan of the baseball power structure on this point. On the other hand, I'm not a huge fan of government intervention. Maybe both of these forces, as it were, deserve one another. And that, in and of itself, should make for great theater. I doubt, though, that this collision will have much benefit.
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