Baseball cover ups on steroids

[injuryupdate]

The baseball situation is bordering on ridiculous - actually I should say the whole USA approach to steroids is ridiculous. Over there you can get androstenidione and DHEA over the counter without prescription and/or age limit, so 14 years olds are juicing up like crazy.

The latest from ESPN:

MLB 'knew of steroid abuse'
From correspondents in New York
November 9, 2005

MAJOR League Baseball officials knew of widespread steroid taking by players as early as 1991. according to a report by ESPN Magazine today (AEDT).

BALCO founder Victor Conte also said - in a story on steroids in baseball to be published tomorrow - it is simple for players to cheat despite baseball's new anti-steroids policy .

Conte was among four men who pleaded guilty to distributing steroids to Olympians and professional athletes in July and who last month was sentenced to four months in prison for touching off a scandal that rocked the sports world.

ESPN's Who Knew? story found that MLB tried to banish steroids as early as 1991 and again in 1997, long before record-setting home run levels by star sluggers that sceptics now see as tainted by drugs.

The report said that in 1991, a steroid supplier claims to have had as many as 20 baseball clients and former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent wrote about the growing problem and what had to be done.

Steroid tests were not mandated until two years ago, long after Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds had smashed single-season homer marks. Bonds ranks third on the all-time list and could challenge Hank Aaron's all-time record next year.

Authors speaking on ESPN also said the report found a steroid dealer who claims to have supplied steroids to McGwire.

US politicians have proposed legislation that would impose World Anti-Doping Agency-style standards upon US sports leagues despite protests from commissioners that they are better off continuing to police themselves.

Repeated doping scandals have forced lawmakers to question that notion, even as American youth are emulating their heroes by taking steroids and growth-enhancing supplement products in record numbers.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig has said he would favour a government-mandated anti-doping policy if collective bargaining cannot produce an effective anti-doping plan.
Baseball union boss Don Fehr was verbally pounded by US lawmakers in September over the doping issue, saying a deal was likely before the end of the World Series only to have the final end without a new anti-doping agreement.

The existing baseball doping punishments, laughable by WADA levels with a two-year ban and life ban, call for a 10-day suspension for a first offence, 30 days for a second, 60 for a third and one year for a fourth.

The magazine also reported that former All-Star first baseman Wally Joyner took steroids that he received from former teammate Ken Caminiti, who died of a drug overdose last year.

According to the ESPN report, Joyner admitted asking Caminiti to help him get steroids during the 1998 season when they were San Diego Padres teammates and Joyner was 36.

Caminiti, who in 2002 admitted to using steroids, gave Joyner pills and he ingested them for some time before throwing them away and regretting the move, the report claimed.

Agence France-Presse

[Unregistered]

I don't need to elaborate, it's all here:

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/5388242

[injuryupdate]

Fact finders could hit Bonds out of park
By Dave Anderson in New York, New York Times
March 11, 2006

WHEN Barry Bonds was asked to comment on the new book that details his alleged use of steroids for at least five seasons from 1999 to 2003, during which he hit 34, 49, 73, 46 and 45 home runs, he snapped: "I won't even look at that. For what? There's no need to."

No need, indeed. No need for Barry Bonds to read what he already knows.

And no need for Barry Bonds to doubt that the fact finders on his tawdry trail have only begun to bark. With all this new and damaging information in Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports, written by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, it is time for:

■ The congressional committee that held steroids hearings last year to schedule another hearing, subpoena Bonds and have him testify under oath;

■ The US attorney's office in San Francisco to pursue a perjury indictment against Bonds for his testimony in the BALCO investigation;

■ The Internal Revenue Service to investigate Bonds for tax evasion during his nine-year relationship with Kimberly Bell, a former mistress;

■ Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig to appoint a special investigator to look into the book's allegations.

With all those hounds on his trail, maybe Bonds will eventually crack. In measuring his arrogant denials of steroid use against the new book's documented allegations, Bonds may have suddenly lost much of the support he had from some of the public, especially San Francisco Giants fans.

With a career total of 708 home runs, 41-year-old Bonds needs only seven this season to surpass Babe Ruth's total of 714, but he needs 48 to break Hank Aaron's record of 755. After missing nearly all of last season because of three knee operations, he returned to the Giants' line-up in September and hit five homers in 42 at-bats over 14 games.

For all of Bonds's surprising surge in home runs at an advanced age, he has never tested positive for steroids.

But the new book's allegations should prompt the congressional committee to subpoena Bonds to a special hearing, just as Jose Canseco's book last year on steroid use in baseball provoked the committee to hold the March 17, 2005, hearing that led to the players' association surrendering to a stricter disciplinary policy on steroids. Congress did not subpoena Bonds to that hearing, saying he would be a distraction.

Mark McGwire, who hit 70 homers in 1998 - then the single-season record - for the St Louis Cardinals, declined to speak during last year's hearings about what he called his "past", an apparent cop-out on steroid use. The new book, coincidentally, reports that Bonds's jealousy of McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who hit 66 homers for the Chicago Cubs in 1998, drove him to use steroids so he could hit more home runs and upstage McGwire.

According to the book, Bonds first used a potent injectable steroid that has also been linked to Rafael Palmeiro, who denied having used steroids to the congressional committee but who later tested positive. The book said Bonds later used undetectable designer steroids known as the clear and the cream, as well as human growth hormone and other performance-enhancing drugs that helped him hit a record 73 homers in 2001.

What may turn out to be Bonds's biggest mistake in his possible cover-up was, as the Chronicle has reported, telling the federal grand jury investigating BALCO that he had unknowingly taken steroids given to him by his trainer, Greg Anderson. Bonds told the grand jury, according to the Chronicle, that he thought the clear was flaxseed oil and the cream was an arthritic balm, two health-store items that anyone can buy. Bonds, a health nut, surely knew better than that.

Then there is Kimberly Bell, who has said that, during her relationship with Bonds, he gave her $US80,000 ($108,860) in cash from appearances at autograph shows and told her to deposit no more than $9999 at any one time in four banks to avoid federal detection. It would seem that the Internal Revenue Service would be interested in her allegations.

If you're Barry Bonds, yes, there is no need for you to read the book. You know what is in there, and you have to know that more and more fact finders are about to pick up your scent. As noxious as it is, they can't miss it.

The New York Times