Kid Cleveland

Wow, who would have known just how right on Jose Canseco had been all along. That's right, the same guy who is currently selling is 2000 Yankees World Series ring for a mere $40,000 on his website is also the same guy we can thank for helping spur the investigation that brought us the visual of a former Yankee trainer jamming needles in Roger Clemens' ass while cramped inside a Sky Dome hotel suite. God help us if the Mitchell people get hold of and release that hotel security tape to the public.

In all honesty, aside from the Page Six style expose on the how's and where's of Clemens injection escapades, what the hell did we really learn from this that we either: didn't already know or had a pretty good hunch about?

Think about it. When Canseco was writing his tell all book Juiced
and former NL MVP Ken Caminiti was singing like a canary to Sports Illustrated, both players separately estimated that as somewhere between 50 and 80% of the players may have been on something. Yet nobody would believe them and it made no sense to me.

For comparison's sake, if you want to know how certain bank robbers get away with their crimes, wouldn't you get the story from the robbers themselves or the naïve bank teller? Apparently, much of America refuses to believe anything is really going on until they get the story from the bank teller and boy can the bank teller really underestimate what is going on.

Throughout Thursdays around the clock coverage on ESPN we were treated to such conclusions from many of ESPN's talking heads about this possibly being the end of the "steroid era" once and for all in baseball. This conclusion is easily drawn by the media because the report chose to name players who are either retired or way past the respective primes in their career. Are you kidding me? So there are no stars under thirty who made the list. Funny how such a report that "out-ed" only the game's fossils can seemingly make it easy to dismiss this era over now once and for all now isn't it?

To me, this also looks like history about to repeat itself in another sport.

Track and field has Olympic class testing systems and you cannot tell me that is a completely drug free sport. Do you want to know why? It's simply because the cheating athletes are usually going to be a step ahead of the testing system. That is why records are still falling every year; what, you thought it was the new Nike's? Sure someone like Marion Jones or Justin Gatlin will get caught from time to time, but that is pretty much an accepted par for the testing course.

In baseball, the athletes are paid substantially more. I think it is safe to say the pattern that took place in track and field is now already happening in baseball now as well. So get used to the sight of bullpen pitchers that look like they can double as linebackers and corner infielders that look like they could lead block for Jamal Lewis this Sunday. It's a part of everyday life now and no dog and pony show for an investigation will un-ring this bell that is baseball's steroid era.