June 22, 2019: Another Player Leaked for the 2003 Steroid List

Time to move on.

It's 2009 and we are still talking about MLB’s steroids issue. As we approach a new decade, one thing is for sure: This issue has grown old!

Back in 2003, MLB performed survey testing to determine how many players in MLB were clean. These results were to be destroyed but never made it to the shredder, instead they made it to this hand, that hand, and oh yea some other hands.

Some 104 players tested positive that year. Who dropped the ball here? No pun intended. How do these confidential results become public information is something that does not make sense. The same can be said on the grand jury testimony of Bonds and Giambi.

Since 2003 we had Jose Conseco’s juice book. We all laughed at him, called him a liar and labeled him rat. Jose has not been wrong. There is something about someone who breaks that wall of silence. He becomes an outcast, but isn’t this was Jose has always been?

Then we had the Roger Clemens vs. Brian McNamee who can misremember saga. That led us the Congressional hearing that brought us the now infamous Rafael Palmeiro finger-wagging denial and the Mark McGwire “Im not here to talk about the past” mess. 

The Bonds story on Game of Shadows also came out by two San Francisco writers who went to jail for not revealing who leaked to them the grand jury testimony.

Do these players belong in the Hall of Fame? I say yes. These performance-enhancing drugs might give you a boost but is it enough to go from great to immortal? Maybe it's all in your mind.  If I take some of these drugs will I be able to hit one home run? Will it help me throw a fastball in the mid 90s or do I need talent? Maybe some. That’s the million-dollar question.

This brings us to 2009. Alex Rodriguez and most recently Sammy Sosa’s names were leaked from the list of players from the 2003 list.  The rest of the names will eventually come out I just don’t want it to be in 2019 and we are still talking about the steroid era.