Freddy, we hardly knew ya'. At least we hardly knew you had it in ya'. Ironic, no? Like virtually every other ballplayer to test positive, you hardly knew you had it in you either!
There are always going to be players who try and get away with it. The only way to keep those numbers to the absolute minimum is for teams to tell their prospects, look, MLB is going to suspend you fifty games if they catch you while we are going to suspend you for an entire year!
Fat chance.
The Steroid Era, Freddy notwithstanding, may have come to a prosecutorial end with the Roger Clemens virdict, which had nothing to do with whether or not he used steroids. It won't have come to an end in the public and baseball writers' minds when the HOF ballot is announced for next year. Some really, really big names thought to have used the juice will be appearing for the first time. Those guys, and you know who you are, can only hope the current voters among the writers retire before their eligibility for the ballot expires.
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The Phils limped home Sunday night and prepared to face a team worse than they are in the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies obliged by dropping the first of a three-game set 7-2. Cole Hamels survived a shaky first inning to go eight innings for his tenth win and first decent start in his last five.
Carlos Ruiz continued his torrid pace at the plate. Chooch is still running number three in the All Star balloting for the starting spot as a receiver, further evidence (as if we needed it) of just how pathetic the whole fan balloting thing is. That said, I received an email from the author/owner of a web site built solely to promote Chooch's election. The site was built to easily accommodate those fans who like to vote early and often. I obliged with about six or seven votes before tiring of the whole thing. The spam filters on these damn things makes it too much of an arbeit and I felt guilty anyway having railed against MLB for permitting one to vote up to 25 times. I was appalled how easily I compromised my principles just to help out a guy who was deserving. Compounding my guilt, I forwarded the link to a friend with an even wider moral streak than my own, appending it with a note that voting multiple times went against my convictions but since it ws the coin of the realm I was caving in. I received the reply I expected: he was even more dismayed than I though he noted the realm was already full of counterfeit as it was.
