2007: A Year of Scandals, Denials, and Apologies

This only compounded the sorry state of the team and organization, as the Knicks finished a bad season and has started off what looks to be another.

The NBA was also held hostage with the usual "Is Kolby Bryant staying or going?" nonsense, and of course ESPN stayed with it every possible hour that it could.

Steroid, steroids, steroids, and more steroids. That is all that you heard about from the talking heads. Mostly ESPN and stat geeks that never played the game complained about steroids in baseball, HGH in baseball, performance enhancers in baseball.

Funny how they never complain about football though, isn't it? But that is something else.

Steroids though were everywhere. First in cycling, yes even Floyd Landis faced embarrassment and frustration after winning the 2006 Tour de France following two failed drug test. He was finally stripped of the title and banned for two years. This was followed by Bjarne Riis, who is owner of the Team CSC admitting that he doped when he won the tour in 1996.

Steroids were in the forefront of track and field as former Olympic sprinter Marion Jones admitted in a tearful confession that she used steroids in the 2000 Sydney Olympic games. Jones also admitted that she lied to a federal grand jury during the BALCO investigation.

She is facing possible jail time and of course said that she was sorry.

Home run slugger Barry Bonds did not however admit to anything or apologize to anyone as he broke the all-time home run record of Hank Aaron. Bonds, who ended the season with 762 home runs, found out that he had been indicted for perjury and lying to a federal grand jury during the BALCO investigation.

Bonds still says that he is innocent and has never knowingly taken any performance enhancing drugs. His team, the Giants, told him to get lost, and no one has showed any interest in signing him for next season.

Then we have the Mitchell Report—the investigation by George Mitchell after being hired by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. Remember Bud is going to fix everything.

Think about this: If the fans really cared do you think that they would keep buying tickets and attending games at record numbers?

The results came out in December and mentioned names of over 80 players. The big names were Yankees pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, along with former closing phenom Eric Gagne and infielder Miguel Tejada.

The report said that trainer Brian McNamee supplied Clemens and Pettitte with steroids and HGH.

Pettitte has admitted to using HGH on two occasions to recover from an elbow injury, but Clemens has strongly denied the allegations and gone on the offensive in defending his reputation and career.

He will appear on the television show 60 Minutes in a week for an interview. This will be a lot of he said, he said; that is if McNamee fights back as it has been rumored that he may sue Clemens for libel.

Of course following the Mitchell Report all of the ESPN talking heads, stat geeks, and purists started with the "Clemens doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame" crap. Look, if you have the numbers to be voted you deserve to be voted in. This was the Steroid Era. It's not a matter of was using steroids. It's more a matter of who wasn't using them.

Just because you have a vote for the Hall of Fame, that does not make you the almighty judge of moral character, values, and beliefs for the entire sports nation or the record books.

To that I will not say I'm sorry.

Happy New Year

You can send your comments to Joel Panetta by email at joel@thesportsblitz.com

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