Jose Caseco is writing “Vindicated,” a new book about anabolic steroids in baseball. It is the sequel to the bestselling book “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big” that ignited the steroids in baseball scandal. It has sorta become a historical document in baseball for its role in baseball’s steroid scandal. Canseco claims he will include information about additional baseball players, such as Alex Rodriguez and likely Roger Clemens, not included in his original expose of steroid use. Canseco identified several professional baseball players as users of anabolic steroids in Juiced including Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Iván Rodríguez, and Juan González.
The new steroid book, scheduled to be released on Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season, was originally to be co-authored by former Sports Illustrated reporter Don Yaeger. He was the ghostwriter for Canseco’s Juiced. After Yaeger took a look at Canseco’s materials, he quit the project telling the NY Daily News:
I’m passing… I had a chance to review the Jose Canseco (material) that he provided me. I don’t think there’s a book there. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t think he’s got what he claims to have, certainly doesn’t have what he claims to have on A-Rod… There’s no meat on the bones.
Officially, the publisher has diplomatically cited “editorial delays” as the reason for not publishing the book.
By mutual agreement with José Canseco, we have decided not to publish his book ‘Vindicated…’ After much consideration, we have agreed to part ways due to editorial delays that made it impossible to maintain our original publishing schedule.
So, Jose Canseco has been forced to changed publishers and find a new ghostwriter selecting Pablo F. Fenjves, a former National Enquirer writer; Fenjves was the ghostwriter for O.J. Simpson’s book outlining how he would have killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/sports/baseball/17canseco.html?ref=baseball
Roger Clemens attorney should be fired. Obviously, attorney Rusty Hardin must have devised the strategy used by Roger Clemens in his interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes tonight. Brian McNamee’s attorney, Richard Emery, was spot on when he identified the likely legal strategy:
I think that this is a lawyers’ game, which allows him to try and attempt to say that McNamee didn’t know what he was injecting or that at least Clemens didn’t know what he was injecting.
Conceivably, this is a crafty legal strategy to suggest that Clemens received so many injections of substances that were NOT anabolic steroids, testosterone, or growth hormone, that there is a chance that McNamee and/or Clemens simply didn’t know what was injected.
Rusty Hardin even made the brilliantly stupid analogy between Roger Clemens and racehorses (as if no doping ever occurs in horseracing)!
Roger took bunches of his shots over his career, much the way racehorses do, unfortunately.
But from a public relations standpoint, this strategy is stupid. It is stupid for the attorney to make an analogy to a racehorse; it is stupid to have Clemens’ publicly outline the hypocrisy of drug use in major league baseball…
Clemens’ admission to injecting several performance-enhancing substances that were to help joints and/or mask pain pointed out the hypocrisy of selectively demonizing some performance enhancers while condoning others. Drugs that allow a baseball player to “mask pain” are arguably more dangerous than growth hormone use and even steroid use. Yet Clemens is proud to use these drugs to mask pain allowing him to continue playing and performing while injured.
Clemens admitted to regularly using Toradol, which is considerably more liver toxic than most oral anabolic steroids. Yet the dangerous liver toxicity of oral androgens is unacceptable, but the even more dangerous liver toxicity of Toradol (not to mention its use to mask pain to allow players to perform while injured) is perfectly acceptable.
The regular denials by athletes accused of using anabolic steroids and growth hormone has become relatively commonplace and quite boring. So, I didn’t expect much from Mike Wallace’s 60 Minutes interview of baseball player Roger Clemens (who was accused by trainer Brian McNamee of using testosterone and growth hormone in the Mitchell Report). But I was pleasantly surprised when Clemens offered “proof” that he never used steroids or GH. If he did use the alleged performance enhancing drugs…
- He would have grown a “third ear out of his head”;
- He would have been able to “pull a tractor with his teeth”;
- His tendons would have “turned to dust”;
- His body would have experienced a “breakdown”; and
- He would have lost “flexibility”
Since none of these things happened, that must be proof positive that he never used steroids or growth hormone!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3676196n
Major League Baseball claimed, in the Mitchell Report, that they have not issued “therapeutic use exemptions” (TUE) for growth hormone (GH). The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) describes these medical exemptions as follows:
Athletes, like all others, may have illnesses or conditions that require them to take particular medications. If the medication an athlete is required to take to treat an illness or condition happens to fall under the Prohibited List, a Therapeutic Use Exemption may give that athlete the authorization to take the needed medicine.
An athletes could be permitted to use drugs that have performance-enhancing effects if they have been issued a TUE. A positive result of a doping test would be dismissed as a result of the TUE.
It is good to know that MLB has not issued TUEs for GH; of course, growth hormone is undetectable in current sports drug testing.
However, when the Mitchell Report asked for the total number of therapeutic use exemptions granted, the Commissioner’s Office refused to answer:
I asked for the number of therapeutic use exemptions granted each year for performance enhancing substances (without identifying the players involved) because therapeutic use exemptions have been a significant loophole in some drug testing programs. The Commissioner’s Office and the Players Association declined to provide that information on the ground that it is considered confidential under the joint program.
Is it possible that several players have TUEs to use anabolic steroids without concern about drug testing?
If reports of the number of TUEs issued at the 2006 Tour de France are any indicator, then the answer is a clear and resounding YES!
Sixty percent of the 105 riders subject to testing were issued therapuetic use exemptions by the International Cycling Union (UCI):
We follow the WADA rules and the WADA rules allow guys to have (the certificates) for certain things… It’s not particular to cycling.
The number of TUEs issued by Major League Baseball could potentially be a huge loophole in their drug testing procedures especially since their procedures are much more lax than those of WADA (World Anti-Doping Association).
The Mitchell Report acknowledged that current steroid education programs used by Major League Baseball that focus on the dangerous side effects of anabolic steroids are generally ineffective:
[T]hese health risks… generally will not deter a player from using these substances. This is because players who use or are considering using performance enhancing substances do not consider them dangerous if used properly. This view is reinforced when players see that other players who they know are using performance enhancing substances arc not experiencing the adverse health effects described in the educational materials.
With the widespread use of steroids by baseball players and the lack of significant negative side effects, it is not surprising that scare tactics using overstated and exaggerated dangers of steroids are unsuccessful at steroid prevention in baseball.
But Senator Mitchell’s proposed solution to restore credibility to steroid education programs seems like a disaster. The Mitchell Report proposes offering “education on alternative methods to achieve the same results.”
[W]hile it is important to educate players about the dangers of performance enhancing substances, it is just as important to educate them on how to achieve the same results through proper training, nutrition, and supplements that are legal and safe.
So, all baseball players need is a creative chemist who can discover or synthesize a legal supplement [that complies with Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)] with steroid-like effects. This legal supplement will be considered safe since newly introduced supplements are assumed to be safe under DSHEA unless proven otherwise by the FDA.
And the baseball player will have a legal and safe supplement to use.
This is the recommendation of the Mitchell Report?
But isn’t that what started the whole steroids in baseball scandal? THG redux.
