The Mitchell Report, and the Tigers
posted in 2007-08 offseason, Mitchell report |The Mitchell Report was announced today. (AP story. Downloadable copy of the report)
A list of alleged names appeared this morning, and included two Tigers, but the list appears to be false, David Pinto reports.
Initial media reports on the Mitchell report seem to come back mostly clean for players now with the Tigers, though Gary Sheffield seems to be implicated. I think most of us probably expected a Tiger or two to be on the list. That doesn’t mean everyone is clean, but it does mean your suspicions are not necessarily dirty, anyway. However, the team did have a report of anabolic steroids in the 2004 season, but no names were known.
At the end of the 2004 season, a clubhouse employee was cleaning out the Detroit Tigers locker room when he found a black toiletry kit that was locked. He and another Tigers employee opened the bag and found unused syringes and vials that they determined were anabolic steroids. They did not report the incident. The employee said that he could not remember who the bag belonged to. (Page 111)
Alex Sanchez was a Tiger in 2004, and suspended for steroids in 2005 while a member of the Tampa Bay Rays. Who the bag really belonged to, though, probably won’t be known, so we can’t really tie it to Sanchez. Two other Tigers (see below) during that time were also alleged steroids users.
SHEFFIED
Gary Sheffield is also a player in the report. Victor Conte of BALCO did say he taught several players, Sheffield among them, how to use “cream” and “clear.” (Page 113). Greg Anderson is alleged to have obtained “cream” and “clear” for Sheffield. (Page 114).
The Chronicle also reported that New York Yankees outfielder Gary Sheffield
testified that when he was training with Barry Bonds before the 2002 season, Bonds “had arranged for him to receive ‘the cream,’ ‘the clear’ and ‘red beans,’ which the prosecutors identified as steroid pills manufactured in Mexico.” Sheffield was reported to have testified that he did not interact directly with Anderson and that he was never told that the substances he was given by Bonds were steroids. (Page 120).
In fact, there’s a whole section on Sheffield. I’ll include it verbatim.
g. Gary Sheffield
On March 16, 2006, a federal magistrate judge from Idaho, Judge Larry M. Boyle, wrote a letter to Commissioner Selig in which he enclosed a copy of an earlier letter he had sent on February 26, 2004 to the United States Attorney for Idaho. In that earlier letter, Judge Boyle reported that on June 11, 2002, after a flight from Boise to Minneapolis, he boarded a shuttle bus and was seated across the aisle from a man who later identified himself as Greg Anderson. Boyle had a conversation with Anderson during the ride in which Anderson said he was in Minneapolis because his “best client wanted him to help his close friend Gary Sheffield who was in a slump and struggling at the time.”According to the letter, Anderson told Boyle that Sheffield’s team was playing the Twins that week and Anderson had “come to work with him.” When Boyle asked what in particular Anderson did for his baseball player clients, Anderson responded:
[H]e will usually reserve the hotel exercise facility and work privately with Sheffield on body mechanics, weights and also take a blood or urine sample, test it to determine if his body chemistry is what it should be, and then give him nutritional supplements. Anderson confirmed to Boyle that his “best client” was Barry Bonds. Boyle concluded the letter by stating he “felt his conversation was sufficiently important to report it to you in light of the legal proceedings pending in another federal district.”
Through his lawyer, Boyle confirmed to us the events described in his letter.
In September 2003, when federal agents executed a search warrant on Greg
Anderson’s condominium, they cited a February 2003 FedEx receipt from Gary Sheffield to BALCO as evidence of probable cause to conduct the search. In his 2007 book entitled Inside Power, Sheffield acknowledged he had received a bill from BALCO for what he called “vitamins” and claimed he did not know whether the “cream” he acknowledged using during his grand jury testimony had contained steroids.In his book, Sheffield recounted his grand jury testimony as follows: “‘I applied
this cream to my knees.’ I told them ‘I didn’t know it was steroids. Whatever it was, it didn’t make me stronger.’” Sheffield then claimed in his book: “I had no interest in steroids. I didn’t need them, and I didn’t want them.” His book asserted that he “never touched a strength-building steroid in [his] life – and never will.”In his book, Sheffield attributed the increase in home runs in Major League
Baseball after the 1994 strike to widespread steroid use, and he claimed that at the time he asked the Commissioner to investigate the issue, only to be ignored. Selig denied that he ever received such a request from Sheffield.
OTHER NAMES
Several players who played for the Tigers at one point in their career are alleged by the report to have used performance enhancers: Mark Carreon, page 163; Hal Morris, page 164; Rondell White, page 165; Phil Hiott, page 194; Fernando Vina, page 213; Nook Logan, page 229. All of those come from interviews with former Mets clubhouse employee. White is alleged to have done them during his time with the Tigers, and the report claims he introduced them to Logan during his time with the Tigers. There’s a check from White to Radomski included in the report from the 2005 season. It’s unclear if Vina did them while with the Tigers in 2004. He’s said to have from 2000 to 2005.
Updated for order of presentation and some wording at 4:15-:20.
WILL BE UPDATED (or followed up) LATER TONIGHT
Update 4:23: Baseball Digest Daily has a list of all players named in the report. (Hat-tip Pinto)
Sphere It
I’ve been anxiously waiting all week for the report. To be honest, there aren’t many surprised in there.
Some seemed shocked Clemens was in the report. What? The guy was hurling at age 45 like he was 25, of course he was juicing. I like Clemens, and it’s sad to see his reputation tarnished, but not much of a shock there.
There were some “surprises” in the sense that I never put one and one together and should have. Brian Roberts? Well I guess that explains his Ruthian April of ‘05. 8 dingers in 23 games, maybe he figured he better lay off since that translated into 56 homers over the course of a season.
Personally, I don’t fault the guys who did take them. Clearly it was going on, lots of guys were doing it, you can bet Mitchell had the goods on another 100 or so guys but simply couldn’t provide enough substantial evidence to name their names.
Biggest heartache on the list? Gotta be Dykstra. I wanted to believe he truly was just tough as “Nails”, a hustler, true player in the sense of the word. Obviously I don’t think the drugs directed his career necessarily, or for most of the players for that matter (save a few obvious ones of course), but it pains me that his name was on there.
I’m glad it’s out, let Selig come up with some absurd response as he always does, let’s put some new rules in place and move on.
And I approve of the asterisk on #756.
Could say paragraphs more but was wondering how everyone feels about the report and fallout.