Link and excerpt below. I’m not touching this one beyond that and one sad, frustrated, distraught paragraph (and, of course, the exceedingly relevant “Cheating Liars” video from FST).
The NEW YORK TIMES IS REPORTING that Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003. Here is your excerpt, none of which was written or speculated about by me, but rather comes directly from a New York Times report that is putting this information forward as confirmed fact:
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.
The disclosure that Sosa tested positive makes him the latest baseball star of the last two decades to be linked to performance-enhancers, a group that now includes McGwire, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro.
…
The 2003 positive test could also create legal troubles for Sosa because he testified under oath before Congress at a public hearing in 2005 that he had “never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs.â€
If you would like a blogger’s reaction, hop on over to our good friend Josh Q. Public to see what he had to say about the report that Sammy Sosa testing positive for steroids. We’re laying off steroid talk around here for a while.
Needless to say, this is another sad, sad day for baseball fans everywhere. One more hero for whom speculation proved true and whose accomplishments will forever be tainted. Way to go players, the union, and Major League Baseball.
The fact that no one is surprised by this is YOUR fault and nobody else’s.
Update: One more thought. I know there are going to be a lot of I-told-you-so’s and jokes going around and all of that stuff, especially in light of everything that happened last week with the Raul Ibanez story. And I know that I’ve always been a Sosa and Cubs hater. But let me make one thing one clear:
I HATE this story. Hate it.
Yes, I suspected all along that Sosa was on steroids, and in fact I would have bet money that he was had I been forced to. (This, remember, is the complete of opposite of what I’ve maintained about Ibanez, who I believe is clean.) And even though the video below called Sosa out two years ago, way before any proof had been gleaned, I take zero satisfaction in a story like this.
It sucks, and it sucks bad.
The Summer of Big Mac and Sammy was such a great experience, such a great memory; and I can only imagine how special it much have been for Cardinals and Cubs fans. And perhaps everyone had already given up the purity of that memory before today, but even in that case this story is still a big, fat kick in the junk with a steel-toed boot for any baseball fan.
I know that we’re all cynical in this day and age, but in our hearts we all still have that innocent, pure baseball fan inside of us who watches the game with child-like wonder — the one who first fell in love with the game way back when.
This story is yet another insult to that part of me. And I’m fucking sick and tired of it.
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“Enjoy” the video, which sadly seems to become more relevant with each passing year, month, and day:
(And once again, for the record, this song is NOT purporting that Derek Jeter ever used PEDs. Listen to the words! “But not Yankees #2!” Not sure how many times I have to explain this to people…)
About Jerod Morris
