What, Me Worry? Red Sox

Public Service Announcement:  OK, here we go!  Turn back Gulliver, we’ll never make it. Shut up! Why is everybody jumping off the bandwagon?  I just don’t get it.  There’s still plenty of baseball left to be played.  My buddy JT sent this Email:  “Are you saving the Red Sox are dead column until after the Yanks rough them up in Boston?”  Are you out of your godammed mind.  It ain’t gonna happen.  The Sox are fine.  Just a little rough patch, that’s all, no worries.  2 games back is nothing.  Am I mistaken, or is Curt “Big Game” Schilling still on this team.  Am I mistaken, or is Manny Ramirez still on this team.  Am I mistaken, or is Big Papi still on this team.  Not for nothing but Papi just beacme the first Red Sox player to hit 40 dings in three straight seasons, and he’s on pace to shatter the club’s season record of 50, set by Jimmie Foxx in 1938.  Am I mistaken, or is Jon Papelbon still on this team.  Am I mistaken, or is Boom Boom Beckett still on this team.  So forgive me if I’m not ready to fold up the tents and call it a day.               

Forgive me if I’m not ready to turn tail and run.  This race will not be for the feint of heart, by any means, but the Sox are in it to win it.  Sure the bottom of the Red Sox pitching staff is very iffy at best.  So what?  Whose staff isn’t.  Am I mistaken, or are the Bombers on the road against the White Sox and Angels while the Sox play the Royals and O’s.  By this time next week it will be the Yankee fans crying,  trying to figure out how all this happenned.  The Bronx Boo Birds will be back too, saying, “woe is me”, while Red Sox Nation say they were never worried.  These New York Yankees do not make the playoffs, mark my words.

Public Knowledge: 

1.  US Basketball smashes China and edges Brazil.  Gold medal here we come, baby.  The US needs a shooter.  Hinrich is not the answer.  I say, get Michael Redd on this team.

2.  Jeff Kent comes off the DL and homers, doubles and drives in three runs last night.  Great.  All I know is he killed me all year in fantasy so I cut him.  Now this.  I could probably pick him up again but I refuse.  I hate him now.

3.  I can’t wait for Monday Night Football.  Kornheiser is gioing to be great.

4. Lienart still not signed.  I’m already not liking this guy.

5. Floyd Landis continues to deny steroid use.  At least, he’s in good comany:

Feb 8, 2005:  “President Bush was not aware of any steroid use by Texas Rangers players while he was a team executive,” the White House said.

Rapahel Palmiero:  “I categorically deny any assertion made by Jose Canseco that I used steroids.  At no point in my career have I ever used steroids, let alone any substance banned by Major League Baseball.   I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.”

Juan Gonzalez :  “I never used steroids and have never been in favor of their use. And, in fact, in 2000, when Major League Baseball did its survey, I was in favor of testing and was one of only two players that volunteered to be tested at that time.”   Three weeks after Sept. 11, Canadian Border Services agents at Pearson International Airport in Toronto noticed that a gym bag coming off a Cleveland Indians flight had no label, nothing to identify the owner. When agents unzipped the bag they found five ampules of anabolic steroids, pills of the anabolic drug clenbuterol, along with hypodermic needles.   Angel “Nao” Presinal picked up said bag.  Presinal was traveling with Juan- Gone’s entourage.  When agents stopped Presinal, he said the bag and everything in it belonged to Gonzalez.

Sammy Sosa:  “Everything I have heard about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are very bad for you, I would never put anything dangerous like that in my body.  I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. I have been tested as recently as 2004 and I am clean.”

Ben Johnson:  “Don’t tell me I cheated the system because that’s bullshit!  I didn’t get treated fairly by the system. They cast me out and they were jealous because I turned in the fastest time ever run by a human and it was impossible at the time.”  After getting bagged, Johnson continued to proclaim his innocence, denying that he had ever knowingly taken steroids. He claimed American sprinter Carl Lewis, had played a role in sabotaging his drug test. Six months later, testifying before the Dubin Inquiry, a Canadian government investigation, Johnson admitted to lying and confessed that he had been using steroids since 1981.

Justin Gatlin:  Nickname – “Juice”.  Tested positive for high levels of testosterone following a race in April. He doesn’t have any explanation for the positive tests, but insists that he has never knowingly taken any performance-enhancing drugs. Then this:  His coach claims  Gatlin unwittingly had testosterone cream rubbed into his legs by a massage therapist who carried a grudge against him before the April race at which he tested positive:  “We know who the person is who actually did this, Justin is devastated. Myself, too. We’re extremely [upset] right now. We are trying to go out and make sure we can prove his innocence, and we hope this individual has the guts to come forward and say he did it.”  Me too, that person would be Justin “Juice” Gatlin.

Major League Baeball:  FBI agent, Greg Stejskal, says he tried to warn baseball about steroids. Agent Stejskal, says he called Kevin Hallinan, security chief for Major League Baseball, 10 years ago. He says he told Hallinan that Canseco and other players were using illegal steroids. “Kevin doesn’t recall that conversation, doesn’t remember this individual. OK,” says Sandy Alderson. “Another person who worked in our office in that time in our security department, a retired FBI agent, doesn’t recall that name or that conversation.”  Right.

We continue to adamantly deny that Barry was provided, furnished or supplied any of those substances at any time by Greg Anderson,” Michael Rains, an attorney for Bonds, said.

More Bonds:  “… If it’s a steroid, it’s not working,” he told the grand jury

Gary Sheffield’s attorney Paula Canny said, “Gary Sheffield has never knowingly ingested a steroid … and Gary Sheffield has never knowingly applied an anabolic steroid cream to his body.”  Sheffield:  ”The bottom line is that I did purchase vitamins from that company.”  Hmmm, do you still say that?

Triple H:   “I have not done steroids, no”. HHH then backtracked and said doctors may have prescribed a medical steroid for him to strengthen his torn quadriceps muscle in 2001, but that’s it (even though Triple H was clearly bigger when returning in 2002).

Halil Mutlu:  Three-time Olympic weightlifting champion Halil tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone.  “I would never do anything to betray my country…I am not stupid…Why would I take drugs knowing that I would be tested?”

Bo Jackson:  In a story published March 24 under Jim Mohr’s byline, dietary expert Ellen Coleman was quoted as saying she knew personally that “Bo Jackson lost his hip because of anabolic abuse.”   Bo:  “I’ve got nothing to hide…If anyone wants to check into my medical past, go get blood tests, go check up on those blood tests and see if there was any anabolic steroids in it. You’re more than welcome.”

Linford Christie :  Former British sprint champion suspended from athletics after failing a drugs test. ”I have consistently opposed the use of banned substances and it is ridiculous to imagine that I would take them…Obviously I am completely innocent of any wrongdoing and any case against me will be vigorously defended.” 
 
Baseball announced that Alex Sanchez was suspended 10 days

Dieter Baumann: In 1999, high levels of the anabolic steroid nandrolone were found in Bauman’s system. The 1992 Olympic gold medallist in the 5,000 meters was indignant — until, that is, he discovered that a tube of toothpaste he used contained the active ingredient norandrostendione. Clearly someone had doped his toothpaste! Baumann went to the authorities, but a perpetrator was never found. The German Track and Field Association allowed him to compete again, but the international association banned him for life.

Lance Armstrong:  “I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs.”

Mark McGuire:  “Once and for all, I did not use steroids or any illegal substance.”  McGuire just refused to partake in Major League Baseball’s steroid investigation.

Wilson Alvarez:  The 34-year-old left-hander was one of the players Jose Canseco identified as someone who used steroids.  “I never took anything.  People can say whatever they want. It’s a free country. All I can say is look at my body. I never took anything.”  All I can say is Canseco hasn’t been wrong yet.

Marion Jones:  “The San Francisco Chronicle story is wrong,” said Joseph Burton, lawyer for Jones, who has consistently denied using performance-enhancing drugs. “Victor Conte is either lying or when the statement was made it was involuntarily coerced. This is a character assassination of the worst kind.”

Victor Conte:  “Admit nothing, he advised,” the book (Game of Shadows) says of what he told his clients.  That about sums it up.

6.  What is Paul DoLuca thinking.  I’ve always had this rule about cheating, cheat up.  I find it hard to believe Paul is cheating “up” on his wife.

7.  Chompers makes the big time:  See his article on Tiger Woods on PGATour.com here.

Peace Out Homies.  Six Two and Even!

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