San Jose Mercury-News writer: Is anyone in baseball clean of steroids

We point you to Tim Kawakami's column today in the San Jose Mercury News.  (that's Matt Williams showing off what may be a tainted ring). The Mercury-News concludes:

There is no other conclusion worth making, even for the true believers: Baseball was dirty from top to bottom in the 1990s and early 2000s, period, end of innocence.

Nice guys, bad guys, nobodies, superstars, pitchers, executives, everybody. Everybody either was using performance-enhancers or thought about using or knew people who were using and stayed silent about it.

   EVERYBODY!

Matt Williams is known as a nice guy in the baseball world.  as Kawakami points out -- nice guys don't want to finish last:

But I barely blinked when I saw Williams' name involved in the sordidness; not because I suspected him specifically, but because I'm a cynical cuss and, after all the reporting, I suspect everybody, particularly everybody who hit a lot of home runs a decade ago.

   Doesn't matter if he was a nice guy when he hit the home runs. Doesn't matter if he was a bad guy. Once again: EVERYBODY.

The piece comments on excuses athletes give for doping, the fact that this is a violation of the law, and the continued mixed message MLB sends:

Also, please don't partially excuse Williams, Byrd, Guillen, Rick Ankiel, Jay Gibbons, Jason Grimsley and all the others recently tied to HGH just because baseball didn't begin testing for steroids until 2003 and didn't ban HGH and other growth hormones until 2005.

   First, these players might have violated federal drug laws. Not good.

Second, baseball's slow-witted response to performance-enhancers was an abomination. The guilty parties don't get a free pass for taking advantage of faulty leadership.

And just this week, the Cleveland Indians showed how little value they saw in exerting leadership when they picked up Byrd's $7.5 million option.

Lastly Kamikawi asks not which countries had doped players, but which players didn't dope for their country (apologies to JFK):

Really, here's the greatest thing Mitchell could do, though we know it's impossible: Issue one page listing the 50, 30, 10, OK, maybe 2 players of that era whom Mitchell himself can vouch for as provably clean.

We better pray that Ken Griffey's, or A-Rod's, or Jim Thome's names don't show up on some Internet pharmacy's list.  Will the last clean player pick up the old syringes?

 

Comments

[drew]

cal ripken and tony gwynn. if they go down, baseball goes down with them.

[Steroid Nation]

We thought of Ripkin and Gwynn when writing that remark. We (really I) quickly knocked on wood, threw salt over the shoulder, and prayed to a God for forgiveness of those thoughts.

Thinking of Ripkin or Gwynn, or Ernie Banks, or Ron Santo using steroids is just not compatible with life.

[Raymond]

Remember steroids help you recover faster and heal quicker. Would somebody be surprised if the iron man was taking them?

[Raymond]

Remember steroids help you recover faster and heal quicker. Would somebody be surprised if the iron man was taking them?