In listening to Alex Rodriguez's "confessional" with Peter Gammons yesterday, you definitely got the impression that where there's smoke there's fire. While on the one hand he admitted to steroid use from 2001-2003 ("that's pretty accurate" left the door open for more revelations), A-Rod was more apologetic for being naive rather for actually taking an illegal substance.Possibly more damaging to A-Rod's reputation, was his accusation that SI.com reporter Selena Roberts was stalking him, and in fact had been cited by the Miami police for trying to break into his home. Peter Abraham of the Journal News reported last night that no such citation took place nor are there any police records of any such incident.
We were also left with the impression that A-Rod is still not speaking the entire truth. A truth that may never come out. We're sure that Bud Selig will want to meet with Rodriguez, just as he did with Jason Giambi, to clear the air. A-Rod will also be quizzed about Roberts accusation that MLBPA COO Gene Orza tipped him off to a 2004 random drug test.
And of course this has the chance to get even uglier, even "zooier". Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wants to conduct another dog and pony show in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which still is NOT supposed to deal with these issues. With nearly 600 thousand workers laid off in January, somehow we think Congress should be working on other things.
Even President Obama was quizzed about A-Rod's failings during his first press conference last night, stating that he was "disappointed" at the news. We wonder too if the President realizes just how little common sense A-Rod has.
Ah, this is only beginning of what is to be a very long baseball season in the Bronx.
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You are right -- this has never been a topic that Congress should investigate. And they have never done it honestly; for example, they have never asked for any evidence that PEDs actually do improve performance and, if so, how much of a boost they really provide. There is a fair amount of dispute about this, c.f. http://steroids-and-baseball.com/ Congressional "investigations" seem to have little to do with legislation and much more to do with giving Representatives a chance to hang out with ballplayers and to grandstand.
ReplyDeleteCongress has always had much more important things to do, but now this is dramatically the case. (One correction: You meant 600 THOUSAND, not million, jobs -- the population of the country is only 300 million.)
A lot of stupid things are written and said about this topic. Costas suggests that we should subtract 10 HR/yr (for the likely steroid years) from Bonds' total - though he has no evidence that steroids helped him that much and doesn't consider the possibility that steroids may have led to the injuries that cost him nearly two seasons (and therefore roughly 70 HRs) this decade. And how do we interpret the situation with A-Rod? Baseball has had serious testing the past five years and he apparently has been clean and MORE productive than when he used PEDs. Is this evidence that PEDs are much less effective than generally assumed? (Remember: just because we call the drugs "performance enhancing" doesn't mean they are.)