Agree with most points, except that how do we know when arod started juicing?  maybe in high school while growing up in miami? Obviously he has the means to afford a higher class of pharmaceuticals today but since he has clearly lied about this in the past he has no credibility.

“Let’s end the parlor games and character assassination and get on with the business of fact-telling and the accurate chronicling of history.”

I agree whole-heartedly, but mostly because I don’t want to spend the next the next year thinking about the drip-drip-drip.  I’d rather spend the next year talking about the ways baseball is addressing the problem than talking about who did what.  It’s not as sexy a story, but it’s a better one.

Getting all the names out now is also a great way for the players to do what baseball did with the Mitchell Report:  take control of the story.  It’s clearly in the media’s best interest to drag this out as long as possible, whereas getting the full story out now gives the players at least a little bit of spin control and pushes the story further toward completion (especially with a full season coming up and other potential stories that will defect attention from the list). 

http://www.the-common-man.com

My memory of this is kinda hazy, but the 2003 tests were supposed to be anonymous, weren’t they? I thought they were intended to judge the scope of steroid use, not to scrutinize individual changes. There was supposed to be no way to link samples to individual players.

What does this do to the relationship between players and the league? If I’ve correctly remembered the details, it looks like MLB broke some important promises to their players. Is this going to make it more difficult to implement effective PED prevention in MLB?

I know everyone is suspect and steroids permeated (permeate?) the whole league, but every player who ever played for the Astros/Rangers should be looked at twice. When the steroid era wants to unwind after a long day, it heads home to Texas.

Nice thought, but we still haven’t seen the 1997 expansion draft protected lists, and there’s nil reason not to release those by now.

But you are right that the union could grab the reins if it releases the list. And right there would go almost any chance at a Pulitzer. It’d be ugly, but baseball has weathered worse.

IIRC the 2003 testing was comprehensive, everyone on a major league roster, and the 104 positives was enough (more than 5%) to trigger the ongoing testing as of 2004. So the names NOT on the list would be just as interesting, since everyone would have been in the sample pool.

If the list is released and Clemens’ name is on it, he’s toast. If he is on the list and knows that today, he should likewise jump the gun, recant, do whatever he can to salvage what little he’s got left, because no lawyer is good enough to save his carcass if he’s on the list.

What’s your take, Craig, on the leaking of this information, especially considering that it didn’t happen until after the FBI raided the facility? I mean, that list was kept under lock and key at the testing facility with nary a hint at who was on it for five years. But only weeks after the FBI raids it and gets the list for itself, four “independent” sources are telling SI who’s on it?

It seems fishy, to say the very least. it also seems illegal, immoral, and, to the players’ association at least, absolutely infuriating. Any thoughts on how the PA is going to view this?

This was an anonymous survey, of sorts, that the PA agreed to in an effort to help the owners clean-up the steroids problem, right? Basically, it was a “good faith” effort by both sides to help clean up a problem that they both agreed needed cleaning. Aren’t we going against that faith now by excoriating the names we find? And what happens if we discover that Pujols, Papi, Pedro, Randy Johnson, Chipper Jones, and Manny Ramirez are all on it?

“that list was kept under lock and key at the testing facility with nary a hint at who was on it for five years.”

lar, if I heard TJ Quinn correctly on ESPN this morning, he said that the list was kept in another state, and there were codes on the samples that corresponded with the codes and player names on the list.

I’m with Scott and Bill on this - is there any legal recourse when legally or contractually confidential information is released like this?  I feel like it drives deeper wedges between the union and MLB at an already tense time.  On a broader level, for me it degrades our justice system - the people employed in the judicial system aren’t trustworthy enough to keep something like Barry Bonds’ sealed testimony from leaking?  If we can’t keep the names of important informants from the press (e.g. the guy the Smoking Gun just wrote a lengthy article about), doesn’t it make it much more difficult to convince people to inform in the future?

“but every player who ever played for the Astros/Rangers should be looked at twice”

Since Nolan Ryan started it all.  Just saying.

Lesson here is that everyone who was dedicated to weight training in the 90s early 2000s (which is practically everyone who was a good player) did steroids - caught or not.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1012317/index.htm

@ MC;  Correct.  Where you have serious weight training you have steroids (aka supplements).

Manfred has released an official statement and if I interpret it correctly there is a veiled threat there towards Orza.