A grisly outlook, thanks to Grimsley
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Latest drug findings certain to have a nasty trickle-down effect
By Phil Rogers
Columnist
The Chicago Tribune
June 7, 2006
You want to scream, don't you?
Jason Grimsley, a guy whose 15-year career proves only that some mediocre right-handers can survive as long as mediocre lefties, is popped in a federal investigation with two "kits" of human growth hormone, and you wonder why you still care about baseball or professional sports in general. What about the pitchers who throw really hard? If a mope like this is using, who isn't?
I share your frustration, but probably not the naïveté that caused you to be so surprised about sports' latest scandal involving performance-enhancing substances. The reality is, no matter how much we long for days when the foreign substances were on the baseballs, science is here to stay. Welcome to the rest of your life as a sports fan or, heaven help you, a competitor.
For Commissioner Bud Selig and his labor/testing bulldog, Rob Manfred, the revelations that an Arizona Diamondbacks reliever confessed to using HGH shipped to his house qualifies as dog biting man. That's probably also true across Manhattan at the offices of the players union, although there the lawyers' tendency is almost always to protect the users, not those who don't use.
Since Major League Baseball finally cracked down on steroid use, everyone involved knew the next firestorm would be over HGH, which has the advantage of still being undetectable. It is banned, of course, but can be detected only through blood tests (and not reliably enough then), and the union won't consider allowing collectors to draw blood.
Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick hopes the Grimsley situation will cause the union at least to re-examine its position.
"We just hope the union will look at it as we do," Kendrick said. "We have to do the very best that is possible to rid ourselves of any and all drugs in our game."
That's wishful thinking. The headlines ahead won't be good ones.
In Grimsley, the HGH version of the steroid story—call it Beyond BALCO—is here. It even stars some of the same cast as the Bay Area probe that has tainted Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, among others, with the most notable holdover being federal investigator Jeff Novitsky.
Before lawyering up, Grimsley told Novitsky he had used the steroid Deca-Durabolin in 1999 and 2000, before there was testing, but had used only HGH since the union—with a strong arm from Congress and a large number of principled players—reluctantly signed off on testing.
Grimsley also named names. They were blacked out in the search warrant the Arizona Republic obtained, but it's fair to say that at least six to 10 unnamed big-leaguers soon will be getting a call from Novitsky, if they haven't already.
If some of them name other names, this could spread wider than BALCO. And while all of the BALCO athletes were granted immunity before they testified before that grand jury, there's no guarantee the HGH guys will be treated as kindly.
The tactics Novitsky applied to Grimsley were very similar to the way he handled BALCO founder Victor Conte and Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, but there's no knowledge of any of their homes being raided. The feds did that to Grimsley after he stopped cooperating.
Many thought the volume would be turned down with MLB running its own investigation of the steroid era, but they were wrong. If anything, Novitsky and former Sen. George Mitchell, who heads the MLB investigation, might be getting ready to turn up the volume.
In one of the biggest surprises ever, Grimsley decided Wednesday to walk away from the spotlight. He asked for his release, and Arizona was thrilled to give him the rest of his $825,000 salary early.
"He didn't want to be a distraction to the team," agent Joe Bick said.
I know what you're thinking: Hey, the White Sox need relievers, don't they?
Just kidding there. At 38, Grimsley (yes, he's the guy who claims to have crawled through the suspended ceiling at the former Comiskey Park to retrieve Albert Belle's allegedly corked bat from the umpire's room in 1996) probably is finished as a player.
But you can bet this isn't going to end with one rank-and-file reliever. Before this investigation runs its course, a lot of garbage is going to be combed through, and some of it almost certainly will be All-Star garbage.
Players and their general managers alike are less comfortable today than they were before the feds barged into 10792 East Fanfol Lane in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Imagine if it's August when the hammer drops again, and this time it strikes a key player or two from contenders. Could Novitsky or Mitchell decide a playoff race or two with their allegations or findings?
You bet they could. But that's just the world we're all going to have to live in for, oh, the rest of ours lives.
The science isn't going away. Once there's a test for HGH, there's going to be something else athletes will take that is undetectable.
It might be different if parents taught their children that cheating is always wrong. But who is being naïve now?
progers@tribune.com |
