SF Chronicle grows the list of MLB steroid/PED users. Part One: Ex-Giants slugger, Bonds apologist, Matt Williams ravenous juicer

This is a growing monster.  Epidemic.  Metastatic.  Malignant.  Whatever metaphor can be used, should be used.  Names of MLB players who ordered/received/presumptively used HGH and steroids from Florida Internet pharmacies appear to be gushing out of the media piplelines.  Like a player on nandrolone, the MLB steroid/doping scandal gets bigger and bigger, cutting across all facets of the game.

The latest names come out of San Francisco.  Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams toss out three names in the Chronicle today: Matt Williams, Jose Guillen, and Ismael Valdez.  Williams reigned as a feared slugger for the Giants in the 90s, although current evidence indicates he ordered the drugs when he played for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2000s.  Guillen, a veteran utility player received HGH and steroids while playing for Division Champs, the Oakland A's in 2003.

The report from the Chronicle details the player's careers, the use of the PEDs, and the unethical doctors who prescribed the drugs.  Journalists from the Albany Times-Union also contributed, which must be where the Chronicle obtained the information.

Williams, with a career .268 ave, and 378 HR, 1218 RBI, ordered the drugs in the 2000s.  Interestingly, Williams -- a broadcaster for the Diamondbacks -- became an apologist for Barry Bonds.  Perhaps Williams' use of an anabolic steroids (nandrolone, testosterone), masking agents and anti-estrogens (clomiphene), and Growth Hormone (HGH)  influenced his judgment.  Corrupt officials cover for each other From the SFC:

During his penultimate season in Arizona records show, Williams placed two orders with the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center. On March 9, 2002, while the Diamondbacks were in spring training in Tucson, records show he ordered $5,693 worth of testosterone cypionate, growth hormone, clomiphene, Novarel and syringes. On May 8, Williams ordered $6,000 worth of testosterone cypionate, nandrolone, clomiphene, Novarel and syringes, according to the records. The drugs were sent to a Scottsdale business office Williams long has used as a mailing address. Williams' prescriptions were written by the same dentist who prescribed growth hormone for Byrd and Guillen.

Injuries limited Williams to just 60 games in 2002, and he hit .260 with 12 home runs and 40 RBIs. He retired the following June after playing in just 43 games. Today he works as a broadcaster on Diamondbacks games. In 2004 and 2005, after he had retired as a player, Williams placed three orders totaling about $11,000 for additional growth hormone and syringes, according to the records.

Since retiring, Williams has publicly questioned the performance-enhancing value of steroids for baseball players. In April 2004, while the BALCO steroids scandal was beginning to unfold, Williams said he hoped Giants outfielder Barry Bonds would be exonerated in the case, and he downplayed the impact the drugs might have on a player's power hitting.

"The other side of that coin is, you still have to hit the ball out of the ballpark. You still have to hit the ball properly," Williams told reporters at the time.

"If you put some foreign substance in your body, you don't all of a sudden learn how to hit homers," he said. "The question is: Are they illegal? Yes. If you get caught doing it, should you be punished? Yes. What that is, I don't know. I had a hard enough time playing third base."

In a phone interview Monday, Williams said that after his 2002 ankle injury, a doctor told him that growth hormone might help him heal. He said he learned about the Florida center from a health magazine and went through a battery of tests before obtaining a prescription for growth hormone in 2002.

Once again we see what appears to be intellectual dishonesty in MLB.  Williams calls up the 'doctor prescribed HGH for an injury' excuse that doesn't fly in honest air; ethical physicians just don't hand out HGH for a sprained ankle.  (evidence shows a corrupt dentist prescribed the HGH for Williams)

Further, Williams used far more than a little HGH.  Those records show a program worthy of Barry Bonds: T, Deca, Clomid, and HGH delivered to Williams' office.

The creeping corruption, now officially exploding in baseball, has crept into the upper levels of the game.  With former dopers holding positions of responsibility and influence, one can see the taint of this corruption.  Not only was Williams a covert user of a sophisticated doping/steroid regimen, he became an apologist for juicers everywhere.  If this isn't a blueprint for cancerous corruption, then someone tell us what is.

Clearly the MLB has a problem.  Steroid/PED/doping use was indeed rampant in the sport.  The influence of drug-cheating and corruption now spreads into the upper echelons of the game.  Who doped?  Who is clean?  What records and what winners are tainted with dope-cheating?  Who is an apologist, because he was implicated in drug-cheating?  Who can be trusted?

As Jose Canseco suggested, perhaps the entire era from 1991 (or farther back) is corrupt.  And evidence indicates that corruption was accepted, and spread throughout the game.

Should baseball crush the dopers? This corruption which covers the sport, now seemingly out of control.  Might it be prudent to erase all players with evidence of doping -- expunge their records, and retract their championships?  Marion Jones, and Tim Montgomery lost gold medals and world records when it was revealed doping tainted their achievements.  Why should the tainted records of MLB cheats stand -- unless as monuments to the success of the cheaters and the futility of the MLB to regulate it's own game?

The game that people revered now seems so much like an entertainment in an era of pharmacologic cheating.  Like pro wrestling, the players got synthetically bigger for the fan's enjoyment.  Not a field of dreams, but rather a field of screams.  Baseball traditionalists should be hemorrhaging Cardinal red with this huge scandal.