This morning I wrote a post that, among other things, lauded the legal counsel Sammy Sosa appears to have been given in advance of his Congressional testimony in 2005. I said this: [Sosa] said “To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs.” He said “I have never injected myself or had anyone inject […]

Things I wrote while struggling to come up with any ballplayer who, if implicated as a PED user, would truly surprise me. Maddux, maybe. Bob Horner. Lolich. Sammy Sosa: the leaking is way worse than the ‘roiding. A roundup of Sosa opinion in the greater blogosphere. Rizzo says that Manny Acta is the Nats’ “current” […]

Will Carroll said something really interesting about the Sosa stuff over at Prospectus last night: I’ve always followed the steroid story as something of an epidemic. It often follows the same models, centering around hubs and nodes. The hubs are players like Jose Canseco or Bill Romanowski in the NFL who were evangelists for the […]

Note: I’m giving this post from yesterday a bump for two reasons: First, it was posted kind of late, and a lot of people don’t scroll back past ATH on a given day, so it’s “new” to a lot of readers; Second, because Geoff Baker his ownself waded into the comments thread last night. I […]

Red Sox 8, Marlins 2: David Ortiz continues to heat up, adding a homer and a two-run single to his increasingly improving statline. Tim Wakefield was strong too. From the game story: Wakefield is now two starts and five home wins behind Roger Clemens for the most in Red Sox history in each category. I […]

It’s basically the A-Rod deal: Sammy Sosa, who joined with Mark McGwire in 1998 in a celebrated pursuit of baseball’s single-season home run record, is among the players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results from that year . . . . . . […]

This is interesting: Steve Wilstein, the reporter who broke the story of Mark McGwire’s drug use, might be in the Baseball Hall of Fame before the 12-time All-Star. The retired sportswriter was among those nominated for the Hall of Fame’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award, 11 years after noticing the supplement androstenedione in McGwire’s locker and […]

John Smoltz, to WEEI: The reason I had surgery was not to just come back for one year. Having surgery certainly quality of life was part of it, but I could have waited to have that. To have surgery at this point, when I did, and not try to milk anymore of the rest of […]

On the field the 2009 season is shaping up to be a great one for the Texas Rangers. They’re winning and looking pretty good in the process. Off the field, however, things aren’t as rosy: Despite being in first place and having increased attendance at the ballpark this year, the Texas Rangers cut several staff […]

From the Boston Globe’s Sox notebook this morning: The Sox have agreed to terms with Wilson and two other picks, director of amateur scouting Jason McLeod said: fifth-round choice Seth Schwindenhammer, a high school outfielder from Illinois, and eighth-round pick William Wilkerson, an outfielder from Augusta State. The players need to pass physicals and drug […]