Sosa is no shock; now it's time for entire 2003 test to come clean
The Players Association and Major League Baseball won't release the names of the players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. But it's inevitable that more are going to come out, as the baseball establishment found out the hard way again on Tuesday.
Three months after Alex Rodriguez's name was leaked, another big name slipped out when the New York Times reported that Sammy Sosa tested positive for a banned substance during the league's first round of testing for performance-enhancing drugs.
Rodriguez wasn't that surprising, and this one, even less so. Sosa was named in Jose Canseco's book "Juiced" as a drug user, and his home run total jumped from from 36 to 66 from 1997 to 1998 inexplicably, in the same manner it did for Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. Sosa already was caught cheating once, using a corked bat in 2003 (coincidentally, the same year he tested positive - a nice double whammy). It will be interesting to see if Sosa tries another excuse for this one, or whether he'll take the Rodriguez route and say he made a mistake. Whatever happens, Sosa's Hall of Fame candidacy is now endangered as well.
And now, we can say unequivically that the wonderful 1998 home run chase was a total sham. McGwire finished with 70, four ahead of Sosa. The real NL home run champ that year should have been Greg Vaughn, I suppose. He hit 50.
And if you're keeping score, that's now five of the top 12 home run hitters in history who are tainted by steroid allegations or admissions (No. 1 Bonds, No. 6 Sosa, No. 8 McGwire, No. 10 Rafael Palmeiro and No. 12 Rodriguez). Manny Ramirez is 17th, so it's a good bet that half of the top 10 will be tainted by the end of 2010.
"I have nothing but respect for Sammy Sosa," the Cubs' Milton Bradley told the Chicago Tribune. "It's unfortunate it comes down to this. Things are supposed to be confidential. Any way you look at it, it's not good.
"From the outside looking in, a lot of people would say everybody looks guilty. But if you've been around the game and know how things operate and how hard people work, then that would be [unfair] to the guys who work hard."
Bradley got the last part right, and the first part wrong. There are 102 more names on that 2003 list. I've written this before: Do we need to find out one by one, bringing this back into the forefront every few months, like some wart that won't go away? Or should the league finally make the move any public relations person worth their salt would do: Come clean. This is not a civil rights issue for the dirty players. They went into this believing it would be confidential, but so many of them cheated, and they knew they were cheating when they did it. The best disinfectant for dirty records is sunshine. Let's open it all up.
Updated: List of all players accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs.
Comments
I think the only reason they don’t release the whole list is it’s ILLEGAL! I don’t condone the steroid use of these players but they are having crimes committed against them. First it’s illegal to take medical information and give it to some one else with out the consent of the person whom the medical information is about. I am also pretty sure most states have laws against publishing said information. Don’t give me the excuse that writers and the media aren’t aware of the laws about publishing illegal medical records. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law. If we break the law to violate athletes rights to make a buck, what makes that ok? Is it because they pissed you off about tarnishing somethin you love? I think not these grease balls found a way to get a cut of the cash. How much different is that from your common mobster selling cigs that fell of a truck? Don’t talk about responsible journlism becuase it does not look like sources were checked, backed or confirmed. This is a money grab nothing less. Thats’s the real the only reason this is coming out one name at a time. Is it’s illegal and some one waits until they need more money to break the law again. Unless you get consent from every person on the list to release there medical records or you bust the criminal enterprise making money off of this(Lawyer leaking information and SI releasing it.). You will only get one at a time so the crooks can milk it for every penny. The whole thing is dirty from the act to the way it’s reported.
I have to go shower.
You’re wrong, Meat Head: The only legality in question is the confidentiality agreement, which the union can waive. This has nothing to do with HIPAA or patient’s privacy rights.
HIPAA is applicable only to “covered entities:” health plans, health care clearinghouses, health care providers who transmit claims in electronic form, and Medicare prescription drug card sponsors.
A money grab? Who benefits?
Thank you for the clarification. My wife works in a hospital and they are crazy about records being accessed. She accessed her own records and got flagged and had to sign a release form to her self. Wit Sosa and other players not of United States origin. They could argue they did steroids in there countries and they are not illegal. Baseball had no policy so they broke no rules. If anything other players should have gone to those countries in the off season to bet better. The cash grab is done by the the dying paper printing a story with out confirming the accuracy of the information. The lawyer who has to have broken so kind of ethics code, why not put your name out there if you aren’t afraid of repercussions.
My point to most of this rant and thank you for the vehicle to do it is. Everyone is bashing players and there is no one clean in this mess. I am starting to think the players are starting to become victims in this. The owners, MLB and players association are for the most part highly educated people. Some players come from areas where you are lucky to learn to read and write. If people who knew better where really watching out for the game they would have found ways to fix this long ago.
Sure the players made more money from better stats but that is a drop in the bucket to how much MLB and owners made off of the rebirth of baseball with the Sammy/McGuire. Then the long ball bonanza after that packed the parks and padded the TV ratings. How many billions of dollars did they make? How many years did they turn a blind eye because the money was just soooooo big!(Can you blame them when you are seeing that much money). Now the media wants to point a morality finger at those people. When they are breaking there own ethics to print the stories.
No one is clean in this and the more the media hypes it up the dirtier the media gets. How long do you stand in a cess pool before you smell like doo doo to. For the first time in years I started listening to music instead of sports radio. Can’t take the same old song any more and it’s starting to stink.
I have to disagree.
The 2003 test served its purpose. A large enough number of players failed that MLB was able to institute a more stringent testing policy. That should have been the end of it.
The fact that people want to know the results is not a good enough reason to compromise the confidentiality of the test — confidentiality that was agreed to by both the union and MLB when the tests were taken.
The only entity that can reasonably release the results of that test at this stage of the game is the union — but it’s very difficult to think of a reason why they’d do such a thing.
The person or persons who continue to leak this information should be fired, sued, and maybe even charged with a crime.