Just when you thought steroids were totally, completely gone for good

February 12th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Come on. We had all moved on here. I was ready to completely convince myself that no athletes ever cheated, ever, and then Congress has to go and get all political on us again. Don’t they have non-binding resolutions to avoid debating or something?

According to John Donovan at SI.com, the steroid investigation Bud Selig and Congress authorized last year is still ongoing and getting nowhere. Player interviews are up next, and if the Players’ Union fails to encourage cooperation, Congress might well be forced to step in:

From the very beginning, when commissioner Bud Selig appointed former senator George Mitchell to lead the inquiry, we knew that this could well finish in front of a bunch of angry, indignant Congressmen again. Now, with Mitchell bumping into too many people with their backs against the closet doors, refusing to reveal their skeletons, the ending seems all but pre-ordained. If the truth is to be known — how prevalent were steroids in baseball, how damaging, who knew about their use, how were they allowed to take hold and, maybe, take over the game? — D.C. might be the only place it’s to be found.

“I think that’s very likely,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent told me recently from his home in Florida. “The public, I suspect, will be very supportive of Mitchell. And the Congress will be delighted. They’ll all look very good.”

As far as I’m concerned, this remains an OK alternative. Not to be cynical, but it seems all too rare that senators face a situation with both the potential for positive change AND political advantage. Beyond the fact that it’s unfortunate that this sort of situation is happening in something like sports instead of, say, post-Katrina New Orleans, it’s a step in the right direction. Far too often the power for change and the political viability of that change are mutually exclusive. If some Congressmen want to really bust Bud Selig’s balls on the steroid issue and get some good press out of the deal, so be it.

Plus, like, steroids are bad. I think I saw that on MTV or something.

Marion Jones is … clean? What!?

September 7th, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

In a twist that will surely make Floyd Landis a very jealous man, formerly dominant female track star Marion Jones was cleared of doping charges after her “B” sample came back negative. The substance in question was EPO, which, according to my own non-existent personal knowledge, probably makes you run faster and seem creepily masculine.

This is good news for Marion, obviously, but … well, excuse me for being a cynical Sally here, but … well … I might need more than this to convince me.

I’m sorry. I know, I know, I should be able to take this in stride - track pun intended, guffaws welcome - but I can’t. It would take something serious to convince me that Marion Jones never did steroids. Some sort of irreducible retroactive test that could prove, definitively, that Ms. Jones never did steroids. Maybe if Jesus came down and told me … or if Barbaro suddenly stood up in his stall, thanked everyone for sending him letters, and then told me that Marion Jones never did steroids, well, fine. I’d believe it then.

But not quite now. Congrats to Marion … but let’s keep things in perspective, eh?