Raffy the Rat
ndleo
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ESPN just reported that Raffy tried to blame Tejada for giving him the pill that led to his positive test. The pill tested to be B-12, a legal supplement.
Class guy. He should be kept out of the Hall of Fame. Jayson Stark should stop being such as brown-noser and vote against Raffy.
Class guy. He should be kept out of the Hall of Fame. Jayson Stark should stop being such as brown-noser and vote against Raffy.
Mike
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First off, don't get me wrong and Raffy is a rat...
...that being said, I hate that Raffy is the scapegoat. All these guys were on the stuff because they could be. It wasn't tested or enforced. Sammy, Big Mac, dare I say Bonds(took him a long time to recoop this time without any aid). Its rediculous to me that Palmerio is taking the fall for the whole generation. If Raffy is held accountable and kept out of the hall, then guys like Sammy, Big Mac and Bonds should be too.
I know there is a soft spot in many peoples' heart for Bonds, but come on! Nooone hit 60 hr's for 30+ years, then Maris did it. Once. 30+ more years and steroids arrive on the scene and its done 6 times! Then there is a buzz about this drug and it hasn't been done since after it was an occurance for 3 out of 4 years. I am a die-hard Cubs fan and Sammy is as guilty as they all are.
Sorry for the rant but I hate how Raffy has taken the heat for a generation and everyone seems to be OK with it. The last 10-15 years have been tainted by this and now that there is a guy that went down, I think people will write off that this ran rampant in the league for over a decade.
Like I started this off, Raffy is a rat. He lied to Congress! But he's the only one that got caught and you are naieve to think that these other guys in the same generation that may make the Hall were clean.
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Raffy is still counting his money in between Viagra episodes, he'll be fine, trust me on that...
BUT, I can't believe that someone who has gone his entire career being a gentleman and a team player has suddenly turned on his teammates (or in this case, one particular teammate) just to cover his a$$. Although, if he's staring some perjury charges or anything else that could land him in some additional heat, I can see where he would give up some information. Not saying it's right, just saying that I can see why he would do it.
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I'm not saying I don't believe that Raffy juiced up and lied because I do- however, I don't think any thinking person in the spotlight would bring down the whole ship from fear that that is how they would be remembered.
Lee
<< <i> All these are good possibilities, so don't be too quick to call him a rat. Wait til all the facts come out rather than what one person might have leaked to ESPN. >>
I agree. Once I'd heard all the details, that's what I figured it was. "Raffy, is there ANYTHING that you've done in the last year that could have possibly triggered a positive result?" "Well, the only thing I can think of is a B-12 injection Tejada gave me, but that's it..."
Not nearly so bad as the "it was all Tejada's fault!!!!" spin people have been putting on it.
Tabe
Obviousily someone within MLB is leaking all of this info, everytime the Raffy camp tries to come up with a story, another leak occurs. I think Bud is making Raffy an example for all of the juicers out there (Barry?).
Vargha promoter, Grand jury, making Canseco look honest (to some degree), 3000 hit/500 hr plateau, steroid test failure, blaming others, .... what next?
Julen
RIP GURU
If he was asked specifically about injecting anything into his body and the circumstances surrounding those injections, why would he not tell the truth ESPECIALLY if he was being investigated for perjury? You're falling into the media's trap where they sensationalize a story in order to make it front page material. Why don't you wait until all the facts come out (and they will) before you decide what you think happened?
Lee
I'm sure the complete story will come out after Congress investigates. It won't come from MLB, Raffy, or the player's union due to the confidentiality agreement.
However Raffy's track record isn't too good here. Up to now he has lied at each stage of this story. I know why he brought up Tejada, because Tejada shows up in Canseco's book. Canseco mentioned during his second stint with the A's, Tejada asked him a lot about roids prior to the off season. The next year Tejada came back huge. Canseco doesn't accuse Tejada of roids, in fact he says that Tejada did use a lot of legal supplements.
Raffy will be the test case for Roids and the HOF. This story is far from over.
If Tejeda gave Raffy something that contained steroids and Raffy didnt know, he has every right to lay blame where blame is due....
If Tejeda gave Raffy something that contained steroids and Raffy did know, shame on the both of them.
Raffy didnt say it was the B12 pill that did it, he said that was one of the things that he ingested that could possibly be the cause. He had to provide a list, like when you go to the doctor and they ask what meds you have taken recently (Tylenol, cough syrup, etc)
With that said, I think Tejada is in the clear and Raffy knew what he took.
The only thing these guys should be stoned for is lying about it. If McGwire got up and said something like "I'm ashamed to say that I used steroids throughout my career. If I had to do it all over again I wouldn't, but you have to understand at the time I felt I needed to in order to compete because so many players were doing the same league-wide. I had to continue to put up the numbers in order to get a favorable contract and provide for my family. If I knew how many people this would hurt, I would have abstained." And that's it. At least the public wouldn't think he's such a schmuck for dodging the subject and never owning up to something everybody knows he did. "I'm not here to talk about the past"... Whatever Mac.
Anyway, here's the article:
"When news leaked that baseball was battling a steroids problem, I hopped in my car and cruised aimlessly around Southern California, struggling to see the road through moistened eyes, wondering how I could have let myself be so blindsided. You mean Jason Giambi didn't grow that second jaw and Mark McGwire didn't put on those 25 pounds of muscle naturally? Could Barry Bonds actually have been cheating when he entered a second prime in his late 30s? Maybe I drove to search for answers. Maybe I drove to find my lost innocence. Maybe I drove to remember why I loved baseball in the first place.
Or maybe I just made all that up.
Unlike most of the idiots who have columns, I'm the idiot who is delighted by the current steroids crisis. I can't even tell you what part I've liked best. Giambi apologizing profusely for something he wouldn't reveal? Bonds claiming he was deceived into using a steroid cream? McGwire clamming up during the congressional hearing like Frankie Five Angels? Viagra spokesman Rafael Palmeiro pooh-poohing any insinuation that he would use a performance enhancer? The possibility that Jose Canseco – quite possibly the dumbest athlete of my lifetime – was the mastermind who brought down baseball? Or was it that so many members of the media seemed traumatized by the stream of revelations?
Self-righteousness, moral outrage, sweeping self-importance ... this "scandal" has it all. More than one columnist decided this was baseball's version of Watergate, which certainly makes sense: Watergate led to the resignation of a president and sent our country into a profound, decadelong funk. Steroidsgate caused an offensive boom in which every statistical norm has pretty much been thrown out the window. It's a totally valid comparison. One scribe who revisited McGwire's historic season came off like an adult who just found out Santa Claus didn't exist. Seriously, could these people really have not known? Contact hitters suddenly hit 40 homers. Shortstops looked like soccer players one day, the Ultimate Warrior the next. Relievers who'd always thrown in the low 90s topped 98. None of this seemed strange? Honestly, was anyone watching these guys and saying, "Wow, I'd love to hire his personal trainer. He looks fantastic!" During the 1999 All-Star Home Run Derby, I was in Fenway as McGwire (who, like Giambi, was skinnier in college than Screech Powers) launched homers over the Monster. Sure, the baseballs were wound tighter than Jerry Jones's face, but there wasn't a second when I thought the guy was doing what he was doing without help.
Here's the funny thing: I didn't care. I wanted to see Big Mac reach the Mass Pike. I knowingly looked past the signs that night, just like I did throughout the Maris Chase and every other shaky event since the 1994 strike. What did these guys do wrong, anyway? If Giambi can post huge numbers and sucker someone into ponying up a nine-figure contract, why should we stop him? What difference does it make if a pitcher gains velocity from an enhancer or from a dead guy's knee ligament that has been transplanted into his elbow?
Wait ... what are you apologizing for again?
Doesn't everyone cheat? Baserunners pass stolen signs to hitters; catchers frame balls to make them look like strikes; foreign players lie about their age; outfielders pretend they caught balls they trapped; pitchers scuff; hitters cork. Cheating has always been part of the game, right up there with potbellied managers and the seventh-inning stretch.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think the steroids subplot is a superb wrinkle to the 2005 season. There have been so many highlights already. Team Selig getting tough on anonymous minor leaguers and obscure players like Devil Ray Alex Sanchez. Bonds taking his sweet time recovering from knee surgery. Poor Brian Roberts, he of the improbable seven homers, becoming the subject of more unsubstantiated rumors than Lindsay Lohan. Some suspected longtime juicers looking slimmer and struggling mightily in April. And the media's accusatory reaction after Nomar's groin muscle tore right from the bone. (You'd think someone noticed a syringe sticking out of his butt as he lay writhing on the ground.)
It's a new era for baseball. We aren't just fans anymore, we're steroids detectives. We've all mentally prepared ourselves for every possible scenario. At this point, we wouldn't be surprised if someone's arm flew off his body during a swing.
So is it a loss of innocence? Absolutely. I'm at a loss about why anyone ever thought these guys were innocent. Now if we found out Roy Hobbs was juicing, that would be a loss of innocence.
(Then again, he did have a career year in his mid-30s ... )
Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. His Sports Guy's World site is updated every day Monday through Friday."
"everyone" should take roids and level the playing field.
IT was fun seeing McGwire hit balls in parts of stadiums that had never been reached before. I remember one shot in Cleveland's new stadium in 1997 that went deep over the left centerfield stands and hit some advertisement. I never even saw a home run half way up there.
Actually, the offensive numbers were DOWN in the late eighties and early 90's(except fluky '87), and it was expansion and population drop that had a more profound effect on the numbers than steroids actually did. Not to mention the ball(as you mentioned), all new parks getting small as well as existing ones, the incredible strinking strike zone, and the no inside pitching(also the body armor). THose all hit togehter pretty much in the same time frame, and BAM!
Then because of all the offensive advantages, it meant that starting pitchers had to throw more pitches, and more pitches with full torque, so now teams had to go to lesser bullpen guys instead of the studs pitching longer. It used to be Seaver for nine innings. In the new modern era it is Pedro for six maybe seven, then a collection of lesser pitchers. That stuff adds up. Then when those good bullpen guys get used often, they have to be rested and then the stuff that comes out after then is pure garbage!
stone, not sure if what you said was a little sarcasm directed my way, but my point isn't that I think steroid use is justified, rather that it's too late to start tearing into guys who got applauded throughout their careers for being great, and now are being torn down because they were juicers. The reason it's too late is because steroid use was leaguewide, but not necessarily a problem back then, as managers, players, owners, GM's, commssioners, presidents, fans, and everybody else pretended no one was on the stuff. But now that they're careers are ending and they've put up hall numbers they're getting labelled as cheaters. Why are steroids more illegal now than they were back then? Even when Bonds, Sammy, and Big Mac were slamming 60-70 a year there were no investigations going on. It took one trainer who got arrested to implicate players, and then it became a problem. Evidence basically fell in the laps of the powers that be, and even then it took the government stepping in to really start testing hard and find out who is currently using and punish them. Everyone can jump on the "steroids are a problem" bandwagon but it's no more a problem now than it was in 1990. So why weren't they looking for it in 1990?
Skin, I completely agree- All those factors have helped to completely change the game. Back in the day you never saw a pitcher doing well yanked because of pitch counts or he looks tired. The change in the game I hate most is bringing in three pitchers to pitch to three different batters in one inning going for the L/L and R/R matchups. How fun is it to watch a 20 minute inning where only three guys step up to the plate? I think each team should only be allowed 8 pitchers- 5 starters and 3 relievers. That would be kooky.
Lee
My feeling is that the field was level, MLB ignored and even capitalized on the steroid use to compensate for the loss of interest in the early 90s.
It all comes down to money.
With that said I also believe that Lee's sig. line fits here.
Raffy is a "smelly pirate hooker," Canseco also.
He could have left the game gently and ensured his HOF election. As is common his ego has driven him to vindicate himself. The reported roid he tested positive for is not one ingested, but only injected, from the accounts I have read.
Maybe Raffy and Canseco will do a season of VH1s "The Surreal Life." Jose can reprise his drag scene, maybe he'll wear women's clothes for the whole run of shows. At least we know his testicles fit in the panties.
Keith