Monday, February 11, 2008

Pettite Excused From Steroids Hearing, A-Rod Implicated?

We're now just two days away from public steroids hearings involving Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee. It was rumored earlier that Andy Pettitte was going to back up Brian McNamee's story about Clemens' steroids use. Now, Pettitte has been excused from testifying, which would seem to indicate that Pettitte doesn't want to have to expose Clemens as a liar in public.

Pettitte and Clemens were close friends before the Mitchell Report came out. No one knows what kind of terms they're on right now, but Pettitte is trying to at least salvage what part of the friendship he has left.

In other steroids news, John Rocker has come public with some statements which would be shocking if found to be true. He says that Major League Baseball knew he was using steroids and didn't punish him for it. He goes as far as to say that he failed a drug test and was never punished. That's pretty damning of Bud Selig, who took the Mitchell Report as an opportunity to pat himself on the back.

Even more important could be the news he said about Alex Rodriguez. According to Rocker, Rangers team doctors and doctors from the Player's Association gave him, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez advice on steroids use. This isn't the first time that Alex Rodriguez has been connected to steroids.

Jose Conseco claims to have evidence of A-Rod's steroid use that he's going to release in his new book. Conseco's not the most trustworthy guy in the world, so I'd take that information with a grain of salt. But keep in mind, no one believed Jason Grimsley either when he implicated Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.

It wouldn't be all that surprising if Alex Rodriguez did use steroids. He was certainly around a lot of users and suppliers both with the Rangers and the Yankees. I'm not sure how likely it is that he would ever get caught though if he did use performance enhancing drugs. Major League Baseball testing simply can't keep up with more expensive performance enhancers, specifically designed to go undetected.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I don't think anyone would be surprised if A-Rod used PED's. His ego and love of money is so huge that I think he'd do anything to promote either one. He's definitely a troubled man.

Anonymous said...

Typical Red Sox fan BS blarney!...I would be more suspect of a comment from a fan coming from a team who has oops been clean. Yeah right. I guess they all do Wheaties.