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.

Is the Gig Up For Clemens?

There was speculation a week ago that Roger Clemens' buddy and fellow Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte would tell Congress that Roger Clemens indeed did use performance enhancing drugs. If so, all the attacks on Brian McNamee's integrity would be irrelevant. Pettitte was a good friend of Clemens and would have no reason to lie to investigators.

Now today, McNamee is claiming that he has physical evidence that Clemens used performance enhancing drugs. The evidence reportedly includes syringes with both traces of performance enhancing drugs and traces of blood which matches the DNA of Clemens.

We'll see just how credible these stories are in seven days, when Clemens, Pettitte and McNamee speak in front of Congress in a public hearing. All three have already spoken to Congress, but to this point they've done it behind closed doors.

The Mitchell Report has elicited some very bitter responses from some sports fans, not all. Many of those bitter fans have been Yankees fans. Upset at the news two of their most important players over the past decade have been caught cheating, many of them dubbed the report Mitchell Report the Red Sox Report. And I can relate to them on some level.

Roger Clemens was my childhood hero. I have his picture up on the wall of my dorm room as I type this. I was very disappointed to learn that he cheated, even if as far as we know he didn't do so when he was on the Red Sox.

But Yankees players being caught cheating is nothing new. What about Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield? Mitchell clearly had nothing to do with them being caught. When star, after star, after star, after star on the Yankees is caught cheating, eventually you have to wonder if the team itself is doing something wrong. The Yankees have long been proud of their "win at all costs" attitude. Perhaps now we're just beginning to learn how far some Yankees players took that to heart.