The steroid post to end all posts

Ok, it seems sports cannot survive one day without talk about steroids. Yesterday it was Andy Pettitte, today it was Miguel Tejada.

Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about steroids. I'm sure you as a reader are probably sick of me talking about them. So tonight I vow this will be the end of their discussion on SpeakGood (though I do reserve the right to cover a huge breaking story). It will be for the better.

Let me start by saying steroids and other performance enhancing drugs exist in ALL sports. Baseball is only a small slice of the pie. The Olympics are riddled with them. The Tour de France, the NFL, etc all have problems with these drugs.

Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and a ton more players took steroids. Roger, it's time to admit it. Pettitte seems to have come off fairly cleanly in my eyes, but now Clemens can't go back on his word.

It is time for Bud Selig to do something to step up and curb this problem. The Mitchell Report was a good start, but it doesn't go far enough.

The Mitchell Report is a joke. Though it gives a lot of good information the investigation was poor to say the least. It relies heavily on only a couple questionable sources and is actually a pain to read. Try reading it, I dare you.

Perhaps the biggest question that needs answering is what do we do to those who took performance enhances. My solution: Let it go. It is in the past and we cannot go back in time. When comparing hitters and pitchers of this time period, compare them with the fact in mind that it was the juiced era. There is no need to prosecute any of the people involved.

That concludes my little finishing rant on steroids. Hopefully I do not need to bring it up again.

Observations on the Roger Clemens hearing

Roger Clemens: "I never took steroids."

Brian McNamee: "I injected Roger."

Clemens: "No he didn't."

Though those are not actual quotes from today's Congressional hearing, they pretty much sum up what happened.

Absolutely nothing.

Ever since the Mitchell Report came out, this entire Roger Clemens thing has been a joke. Basically, it's McNamee's word against Clemens', and there is very little evidence whatsoever. McNamee claims to have used syringes and bloody gauze with Clemens' DNA on them, but I highly doubt that.

Today's hearing was more about public perception than anything. Honestly, Clemens looked innocent. Do I think he took steroids? Perhaps, but he sure can lie tremendously well under oath if he did.

McNamee on the other hand looked suspicious to say the least. While being berated by multiple congress members, he showed very little emotion and he seemed to backtrack on earlier statements he made.

Maybe McNamee is telling the truth. Regardless, who is America going to believe? A seven-time Cy Young winning superstar pitcher, or a former cop turned steroid distributor?

The second option does not seem like the right one to me.

Knoblauch subpoenaed, witchhunt continues

Former Yankee Chuck Knoblauch was subpoened today to testify before Congress about this whole steroids "issue" that Major League Baseball has going on.

I say that sarcastically because this whole steroid thing is getting pretty ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the winter break downtime of SpeakGood did not allow me to discuss the Mitchell Report and the corresponding fallout. To sum up all of my aggression, I am not a huge fan of the report, and I have not heard many that are. A lot of the report is based off singular testimony from a questionable source (read down in the article) and it almost seems to be a witchhunt.

And, what is most frustrating is that Congress is continuing to investigate all of this. Though they do need to have some hand in this, they are biting off more than they SHOULD chew. It is the MLB's responsibility to govern itself. Many of these supposed steroid infractions hardly warrant prosecution.

Moreover, besides some side testimony about Roger Clemens and Andy Petitte, ESPN commenter Stoney2183 summed Knoblauch's role in the investigation the best:

why do they have to use the pic of chucky while he was with the royals? if the royals condoned steroids, they wouldn't have been in the cellar for so many years.

That is all.