More Than Just Baseball

It would have been naive to believe the cloud of steroids would never touch the Blue Jays.

Now it has, but for this club, it's more than just an issue surrounding one ballplayer.

It adds to their credibility woes.

SCOTT AUDETTE/REUTERS

Troy Glaus has been linked to a Florida pharmacy alleged to have illegally distributed performance-enhancing drugs to pro athletes.

Attendance is basically flat at slightly better than 28,000 per game, better than it was in 2004 and 2005, slightly down from '06. As much as the Jays like to complain about having to compete against the BoSox and Yankees, the fact they can't convince their own fans to turn out in consistently greater numbers cuts into their revenue base.

Team performance is similarly stagnant. At 72-70, equalling last year's 87-win record is unlikely, and even tying the 80-win record of two years ago is going to require beating Tampa Bay once in a while.

So much was promised this year, and the injury excuse can only carry J.P. Ricciardi so far as his five-year plan moves into its second five years. Even the embattled Leaf GM John Ferguson always says, "You are what your record says you are."

Ricciardi, meanwhile, looked very, very bad earlier this season with his out-and-out fibbing over the B.J. Ryan story, and Paul Godfrey's insistence on backing up his GMs verbal contortions didn't make him look much better.

Basically, the two men agreed that lying to the fans through the media was okay in their books.

Now comes the Troy Glaus mess.

Sandwiched between ugly revelations involving St. Louis outfielder Rick Ankiel and Baltimore outfielder Jay Gibbons (a former Blue Jay farmhand), with the media apparently still doing all the digging, Glaus may have been outed at the very least as a player who was in possession of steroids from the controversial Signature Pharmacy at a time when baseball had finally got around to making them illegal.

Interestingly, the Glaus allegations are getting a lot of traction in the San Francisco area when Barry Bonds is god but people now want to know if Glaus was on the juice when he won World Series MVP honors in '02 as part of an Angels team that beat the Giants.

So far, Glaus has said nothing. Ricciardi has said nothing. Godfrey, uncharacteristically, has been silent.

A stonewall? Are these guys serious? In a market that is clearly still lukewarm towards them despite all the efforts to remake the ballpark and create a new (if rather phony) team philosophy of being the Oakland A's east, this is no time for these people to go silent.

If Glaus has a case to make for himself, he should make it. The one approach that no athlete has ever really tried is just coming clean. How the fans at the dome react to him when the team returns home will be interesting. These are same folks who have booed Jason Giambi mightily and forced Rafael Palmeiro to wear ear plugs, after all.

Ricciardi, meanwhile, has to try and convince the world that he had no knowledge that he was fooled into buying a possible steroid user when Glaus was acquired. And Godfrey has to somehow spin this favourably to a Jays public that is getting rather fatigued over promises and more promises from a baseball team that used to play with the big clubs.

Go with the Mark McGwire approach if you want, boys. But for the Jays, this isn't just about Troy Glaus, and it isn't just about steroids.

A Sad Story

It's as close to "Say It Ain't So" as you can imagine in modern sport.

Rick Ankiel was getting to be the feel-good story of the Major League Baseball season, the great comeback that makes all those memories of the odious Barry Bonds go away.

The guy who couldn't throw a strike and went to the minors to make himself into a big-league hitter comes back to be a force that puts the St. Louis Cardinals back into post-season contention in Roy Hobbs-like fashion.

Now this. Human growth hormone. Loads of deliveries several years ago, just about the time when Ankiel was trying to morph himself into a slugger.

This one is really going to stink. The New York Daily News broke the story today that Ankiel received a 12-month supply of HGH, and man oh man, is baseball going to take an unhappy hit on this one.

Even Ankiel's boss, GM Walt Jocketty, has already been quoted as saying that it would be "tragic" if the story is true.

What can Ankiel say? Deny it outright? Say he was using it for his cat?

And don't tell me it doesn't matter because it happened several years ago.

First of all, we don't know that. HGH is difficult to detect, and Ankiel has been in the minors for several seasons where, presumably, the testing procedures are even less sophisticated.

Moreover, the entire point of the Ankiel tale is that this was a young man who refused to give up on his dream, not a young man who found a pharmaceutical answer to his athletic problems.

If there's a possible positive conclusion to this, its that Ankiel comes clean, admits what he did and why he did it, and tells the world he doesn't do it anymore.

But what are the chances of that happening? Zero, maybe?

Say it ain't so, Rick.

The Kids Are. . .Where?

Maybe J.P. Ricciardi deserves to walk the plank. Maybe not.

Moreover, it's not clear what purpose such a move would serve in May of the 2007 MLB season.

But there's something here that just doesn't make sense.

To my limited baseball understanding, the arrival of Ricciardi in 2001 was supposed to herald a new style of doing business for the Blue Jays or, more accurately, a return to the way in which they once did business.

Unable to compete financially with the Yanks and Bosox, the Jays were going to have to be Oakland East, or even a Canadian version of the Minnesota Twins. Lean and resourceful, they would rely on sharp drafting and young players to gradually match what New York and Boston were accomplishing with swollen payrolls. The farm system would accomplish what big money could not, although it might take a little time.

So here we are in 2007, and my question is simple.

Where are the kids?

If memory serves, this team wasn't going to be about expensive free agents and veteran talent, wasn't going to depend on big names and huge salaries. Yet here we are worrying about B.J. Ryan's elbow, A.J. Burnett's lack of productivity and Frank Thomas' inability to deliver bang for the buck.

This sure looks like the Jays, under Ricciardi, are trying to do exactly what the Red Sox and Yankees are doing, but just not doing it nearly as well.

I thought, perhaps in error, that the idea was to suffer for a while and then hit it big like the Milwaukee Brewers are doing this season with a young, affordable roster (one that, interestingly, includes former Jay drafts David Bush and Gabe Gross).

Instead, there's a $100 million payroll, a hugely expensive centre fielder but no pitching, a light sprinkling of youth acquired during the Ricciardi era and a GM who can't quite stop doing a rather lame Pinocchio act these days.

All of this would be fine if the rest of the baseball world was drooling over the talent hidden in the Jays system, slowly maturing and soon-to-be-ready for prime time, poised to take over the burden if and when older players stopped producing or broke down.

But that's not the case, either.

Did I miss a memo somewhere? I can live with Ryan's elbow going snap. That's baseball.

But where are J.P.'s kids?

And He's Dating Morgan Fairchild, Too!

This just in from the J.P. Ricciardi Sports Flash:

"De La Hoya beats Mayweather in fifth round knockout. . .Devils come back to eliminate Senators. . .Brady Quinn goes first overall in NFL draft. . .Nowitzki's 65 points helps Mavs knock off Warriors. . .Frank Thomas in middle of MVP season."

Yeah, that's the ticket.

I mean seriously, how much arrogance does it take to lie your ass off, then admit it, and then basically shrug and double-dog-dare anybody to say anything about it?

It remains incredible, really, how much cachet Ricciardi seems to have built up in this town despite having never accomplished anything. People barely allowed Rob Babcock to get his family photos up in his office and crucify John Ferguson on a daily basis, but while Ricciardi has been around longer - he's now in the sixth year of his five-year road map to greatness - few seem inclined to even question him.

Right now, after spending more of Uncle Ted's money, he may have put together a worse club than last year, albeit with some difficult early injuries to Reed Johnson, Greg Zaun and, of course, B.J. (My Aching Back) Ryan.

This business about it's-not-lying-if-you-know-the-truth is one of the most incredible blatherings to erupt from the yap of a local sports exec since Floyd Smith fired Doug Carpenter with the immortal opening line, "I've got nothing to say and I'm only going to say it once."

You might think that a franchise that has endured such drastic attendance setbacks over the past decade might want to show the paying customers a little more respect than out-and-out lying to them through the media. Now, there is no reason to ever again believe a single utterance from Ricciardi's mouth. We all simply have to assume he's fibbing again anytime he has something to say.

Clearly, the man thinks he's not only the genius of baseball, but that he's untouchable.

Not bad for a guy who runs a club with the third worst record in major league baseball. Guess reaching the giddy heights of second place went to his head.

The Ever-Changing Truth

Pete Rose is like a kid who just broke a window.

Desperately, he's trying to come up with the right answer to give to the adults who aren't too happy with the window situation.

Denial sure didn't work. Got him banned from baseball.

Bravado? Nope. Pretending not to care? Didn't work either.

Now, based on a radio interview, Rose is willing to say whatever anybody wants him to say if it'll get him reinstated and maybe into Cooperstown.

Bet on my own team? Every day! Twice on Sundays!

In Rose's mind, this paints him only guilty of being a manager who loved too much.

As always, it then seems to catch him by surprise when the rest of the baseball world doesn't quite share his viewpoint.

In this case, for starters, it only confirms him as an unrepentant liar when, long after the fact, he acknowledges that the facts of the Dowd report were basically bang on.

And betting on your own team? What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, lots.

With money in the balance, there's the issue of how a manager might choose to handle his pitching staff or any injuries his team might have.

Morever, since 162 bets per season seems unlikely, what was he telling other bettors when he didn't lay down a few bucks?

Then, of course, there's the relatively minor detail of this all being strictly verboten by the lords of baseball.

See, I've always believed that Rose should be on the Hall of Fame ballot, which he isn't, with the voters charged with that particular privilege then allowed to make the decision.

Given that which happened to Mark McGwire in the most recent round of balloting, I don't see Rose suddenly skating through.

But his other dream, of reinstatement to baseball and returning to the dugout, seems more far-fetched than ever.

He wants to come up with the right answer, not understanding that the time for that has long past.

It was probably back when the Dowd Report was originally produced.

Or maybe when Jim Gray asked him to come clean on national television.

But saying now that he bet and bet and bet on his own Reds isn't going to come close to getting it done.

One wonders if McGwire is watching, possibly thinking of revising his own stonewalling strategy.

Foiled

Rats!

Barnacles!

Curses!

(Insert any other word of frustration in common use by arch-criminals featured in comic strips or movies here)

We were this close, or at least it seemed for a few days, to being rid of Barry Bonds.

This close. (Put your thumb and index finger about a centimetre apart).

It would have been the perfect ending for one of this generation's most arrogant and odious athletes if, just 22 home runs of becoming the greatest home run hitter of all-time, he found himself unemployed and without suitors.

Remember Dustin Hoffman in the movie Tootsie when his agent looks him straight in the eye and says, "NO ONE. . .will hire you."

And then the Hoffman character ends up in a dress.

Now Barry doing boo-hoo in a frock isn't exactly an enticing scenario.

But after all he's done to the integrity and image of the game, it would be a fitting end if he found nobody interested in his, ahem, services as a free agent.

As baseball's winter meetings opened in Florida on Monday, it seemed that might be the case. Bonds' agent went into a lengthy public diatribe that seemed the indicated his client no longer fit into the "business plan" of the San Francisco Giants, which made a certain degree of sense since the Giants hadn't opted to offer Bonds' salary arbitration on Friday.

There were some murmurings that the Boston Red Sox might be interested if they moved Manny Ramirez, and, conversely, that the Giants might solved their need for a big bat by trying to trade for Ramirez.

But other than money, the Giants didn't seem to have the wherewithal to do a deal.

All seemed in order, then, for a happy ending for baseball.

No job for Barry. Oh, so sad.

But now it appears, after an exchange of ideas between Giants GM Brian Sabean and Bonds' agent, that the Giants are indeed in the process of bringing back Mr. Sunshine for his final charge at history.

No other team would want this guy, at least no team interested in winning. His bat might still be helpful, but all the other stuff - the posse, the controversial behavior, the constant steroid questions - outweighs what he might be able to contribute as a 30 home run man on a wonky knee.

But the Giants, sadly, can't resist. San Fran still has affection for Barry, probably the only region of America that still does, and the baseball team can't afford to ignore the commercial appeal of Bonds' pursuit of Henry Aaron's all-time record.

So the signals seem to be that Bonds will remain a Giant, although there's still hope that it will all fall apart and every other team will also turns its back.

As they said over and over in Angels in the Outfield, "It could happen."

Still Not Too Late

It's not too late for Mark McGwire to be a stand-up guy.

And that might just save him from the same fate as Pete Rose.

On the outside of Cooperstown indefinitely while the debate over his candidacy rages on and on and on. . .

When he defiantly sat before Congress and stonewalled, McGwire alienated a lot of Hall of Fame voters, as well as fans. People weren't necessarily hoping to get details of every pill and every needle, but some honesty and some humility would have gone a long way.

Now, with balloting for this year's Hall of Fame class about to commence, McGwire could still do the honesty and humility thing.

He could say sorry. He could admit to doing things to his body that while not necessarily illegal under baseball's rules certainly were unsportsmanlike. He could articulate the reasons why he and others chose to enhance their performance in an era in which baseball was hungry for star power and chose to turn a blind eye to much of what was going on.

He could just be a standup guy. One statement, one press conference, and the argument that he should be denied access to Cooperstown solely on the basis of his congressional filibuster would vanish.

The betting here is that had Rose come clean right away when he first sought admittance to the Hall of Fame, he'd be enshrined by now.

There is, of course, no indication that McGwire intends to go public at all. In fact, he apparently has declined to co-operate in any way with baseball's ongoing investigation into drug use in the sport.

So the debate over his eligibility/suitability has really picked up steam.

Many writers, and many Hall of Fame voters, have stepped up with excellent explanations of their reasons for or against voting for McGwire. The Star's Dave Perkins, to my mind, has the best reason not to vote in the slugging first baseman; he just doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers. It may be because I'm predisposed to keeping McGwire out, but this argument makes good sense.

In St. Louis, the town where Big Mac had his collision with history, this is a volatile issue. Jeff Gordon, a fine columnist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, weighs in with his belief that McGwire has no chance of being a first ballot choice.

The New York Daily News goes to the heart of the steroid matter, it's influence on younger athletes,   while veteran Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan adamantly refuses to even consider giving McGwire his vote.

This is clearly an issue that evokes a great deal of passion among those who have been around this game for a long, long time.

Right now, it appears McGwire won't get enough votes to get in this year. But that just means the debate will be shifted to next year, and to years beyond.