More to ponder on the Grimsley situation….

June 12th, 2006 | Posted by PostmanR

Friday, Chris Mihlfeld (Pujols’/Grimsley’s trainer) denied he has any ties to steroids or HGH and not only was he sure his name wasn’t blacked out in the affidavit; he claims he has spoken to Grimsley and the former Diamondbacks pitcher has assured Mihlfeld his name wasn’t mentioned.

Okay, a few things to mention in regards to this.

First, this in no way takes Mihlfeld off the hook. (Just as Deadspin’s calling his name into question incriminated him.) There’s simply not enough solid information one way or the other to know for certain who exactly Grimsley name dropped. Until the names are actually released or someone comes out and admits they are in the affidavit before the names are released, it’s pretty much all still going to be speculation.

One of the more interesting things going on with this situation is what the commenters on Viva El Birdos have done. A few have done some educated guessing as far as the font/size of the text in the affidavit and inserted Mihlfeld name into it. Take a look at this link. (If the image looks small, just cursor over it and a magnifying glass will appear so you can zoom in.) It seems to suggest that although ‘Kansas City Royals’ fits, Chris Mihlfeld doesn’t fit because it’s too short.

This guy’s doctoring of the affidavit suggests that Gene Monahan (trainer of the New York Yankees) is a perfect fit. However, Monahan is still the trainer of the Yanks (not the former trainer as the affidavit says) so that doesn’t really work out. And adding to that, the commenter wrote in ‘Eugene Monahan’ to make it fit right. And what makes even less sense is that ‘Eugene Monahan’ and ‘Chris Mihlfeld’ are the exact same length (13 letters) but yet one fits and one doesn’t. How does that work?

Others have pointed out that the way the name is blacked out (the end of it isn’t high, suggesting it can’t be a ‘d’ and it must be something smaller, like an ‘n’ or an ‘m’) suggests that the name can’t be Mihlfeld.

Gosh, all this speculative stuff has my head hurting.

So yeah, let’s just wait this one out, because that’s about the only sure way we’re going to know the truth.

And lastly, former Yankee Jim Leyritz admitted to using amphetamines during his career Friday on the Dan Patrick show. Leyritz made the point that the use of these so called ‘greenies’ was prevalent among players in the game during his tenure in the league. Which brings up the point ‘If a lot of guys are using performance enhancers, there’s no testing for it and they work, why not take them? What’s the harm in it? It can only help, not hurt.’

Okay, enough of this. Time to see if the U.S. can crawl out of this 2-0 hole against the Czech Republic.

Gulp.