Keeping An Eye On It...

Well it took a while, but anything that takes this long has a good chance of being done correctly, right? Roger Clemens was finally indicted by a Federal Grand Jury today for 6 charges stemming from his making false statements under oath. Normally I'd be very excited about the prospect of Roger Clemens being indicted, but it's hard for me to really dive in that pool right now, since Barry Bonds hasn't done a stitch of jail time yet (Greg Anderson has done about 5 times as much as Bonds would have incidentally), and Miguel Tejada got off with a pretty tame slap on the wrist too. Still, this has some promise, and I'll certainly pay attention to what happens with the indictment.

I remember watching those entire Congressional Hearings from start to finish two and a half years ago in total shock. Shock not only for the depths of Clemens own self-denial that he had taken PED's, but the numerous members (mostly Republican Dan Burton) of Congress who BELIEVED him. Burton in particular went after McNamee really hard in his line of questioning, and flat out called him a liar while in the very next breath calling Roger Clemens a "Titan". I remember screaming at McNamee to look at Burton and say, "If you don't want to believe me Congressman, go ask Andy Pettitte if I'm telling the truth." Unfortunately, he never did.

As for Clemens, this indictment will hopefully be the final nail in his own self-imposed coffin. I've never taken so much joy watching someones own arrogance cause such self-destruction. If you're keeping score at home, since the Mitchell Report confirmed what we all suspected about Clemens being a juice-head, we've heard Clemens say (under oath mind you) "No that was my WIFE'S Human Growth Hormone", found out about his affair with Mindy McCready which could have happened when she was 15, watched him tell Mike Wallace that "hard work" was responsible for his accomplishments, and finally watched him have his name removed from Charity Golf Tournaments plus Institutions of Sports Medicine that once bore his name.

If Clemens does in fact end up in jail for this it will drip of irony because the only person really responsible for putting Roger Clemens in jail...is Roger Clemens.

Well That's A New One...

While watching the White Sox decide that they'd like to urinate away their chances at making the postseason by losing 3 out of 4 to the worthless and baseball incompetent Baltimore Orioles, I needed to look for something in sports to distract me that wasn't Chicago Bears related. I didn't have luck at first since the Bears released their (ahem) "depth chart" today that really is more of a rough draft since Devin Hester is listed as a starting receiver despite a groin pull and Devin Aromashadu being WAY better at the position than Hester being listed as the #3. Then my brother brought THIS gem to my attention.

It seems our old friend Brian Cushing made the news again, relating to his positive test of a banned substance. After amazingly being allowed to keep his silly award after a second vote was taken, he is now trying to double down on his luck, by trying to convince the NFL to reduce his suspension because his reason for testing positive was (drumroll) "Overtrained Athlete Syndrome"!!!!!

YES! OF COURSE IT WAS!!! Man we really all owe Brian an apology don't we? We're soooo sorry Brian!!!! How could we have missed that?! I mean obviously Ben Johnson, Floyd Landis, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettite, Roger Clemens and the others offered that lame excuse too right? Shame on us! We really should have known that it was yet another case of "OAS". "OAS" has been a silent epidemic in sports. It's obviously been responsible for at least 90% of the positive test results for performance enhancing drugs over the years. Arnold Schwarzenegger himself told people he too was a victim of "OAS" because he never took anything during his competitive bodybuilding days. Lyle Alzado also told the world that "OAS got me what I wanted but it also got me very sick." Vince McMahon of the WWE was famously on trial for distributing cases of "OAS" throughout his entire organization. And you guessed it, Barry Bonds' defense for his indictment is that he too is a victim of "OAS".

WOW...I'm stunned. I can't believe Brian thinks the league is this stupid. Apparently his owner thinks the league is this stupid too because Bob McNair actually met with Goodell today trying to convince him of this nonsense.

Here's hoping Wyatt Goodell holds up this picture to McNair and asks "Does OAS give you boobies too?"

Well, Well Well...Better Late Than Never

Please click on the picture above to see a clip from the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster* in which Floyd Landis issues one of several denials regarding his stripped 2006 Tour De France win over his use of performance enhancing drugs.

Apparently someone does have a conscience after all, and that someone in Floyd Landis. Here we are now, after years of his supposed righteous indignation denials, cockamamie excuses (i.e. "whisky defense"), filing countless court appeals, writing a book called "Positively False : The Real Story Of How I Won The Tour de France", and the ultimate douchebag move of Landis raising money for the "Floyd Fairness Fund" which people donated (approximately $1 million) to help him pay his outstanding legal bills. After all of this garbage he has spewed...now he wants go all Jose Canseco on us, and tell the truth.

And what a truth he has to tell too! Landis sent repeated emails to senior cycling officials confessing not only his own EPO and blood transfusions, but those of his former teammates Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, and David Zabriske. He didn't stop there. He also claims that Lance Armstrong told Landis that U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team director Johan Bruyneel had a financial arrangement with ICU to make sure that any positive tests were covered up. Landis went on to further say that Lance Armstrong's personal trainer Dr. Michele Ferrari of Italy to assist him with the extraction and re-transfusion of the blood transfusions, and that he only accepted cash for these transactions. Landis also give many other sordid details that upon reading them seem like they are pretty straightforward. WADA, USADA, and more importantly Jeff "Eat His Lunch" Nowitzky think so too.

The reaction from Lance? He's going the "credibility" route. Apparently Armstrong is not only 100% arrogant, but completely stupid too. All he needed to do was remember how many people in 2005 said Jose Canseco wasn't credible either, to know that issuing that charge is pretty much guaranteed to blow back in your face! Also following Lance's play is UCI President Pat McQuaid by saying "These guys coming out now with things like this from the past is only damaging the sport. If they've any love for the sport, they wouldn't do it." Oh...My...God....

There's several things at play here that The Beard is having a field day with. First of all, Landis is really just a complete moron! Straight up, indefensible, how does he put his shoes on in the morning type of moron! He's a moron not for telling the truth, but for telling the truth after YEARS of trying to B.S. his way around his own cheating. What's important to remember however, is that just because Landis is a moron, doesn't mean he has bad eyesight.

I do believe that like Canseco, Landis finally realizes that the truth shall set him free. I also believe that like Canseco, Floyd realized that by telling the truth and naming names, he can finally stop being the one that's been fairly or unfairly singled out as the doper in cycling. WADA has maintained for years that Cycling is the #1 sport in the world for drug cheating and dopers. Think about that for a second...that's more than football, track and field, baseball, hockey, golf, and bodybuilding/weight lifting. Floyd knows this too, and now because he's willing to sing, he is offering us a glimpse at just how far the Cycling Blood Doping and Performance Enhancing Rabbit Hole goes.

I also believe that we are now closer to finally taking down the false god that Lance Armstrong is. Yes he's been knocked down several pegs already, but nothing has ever been proven with him in terms of his cheating. There hasn't been a smoking gun so far, and to be fair even with his confession Floyd isn't really providing one either. Still Landis has filled in a lot of blanks today and Lance is certainly acting itchy about these new charges. That's probably because investigations are now actually going to transpire, and we now might have real proof that the guy who tells people dying of cancer "If you want it bad enough, you can beat cancer like I did", is nothing but a blood doping, steroid ingesting, lying dirtball.

But don't take my word for it, just ask the late George Carlin...

Storm Coming?

In case you have forgotten (and Steve Henson of Yahoo Sports hasn't), Doctor Anthony Galea is still in a lot of trouble. Galea is still facing charges in Canada for selling a drug called Actovegin (which is an unapproved drug extracted from calf's blood), and his assistant is facing charges in the U.S. for trying to cross the border with HGH. Galea's official specialty is using a blood spinning technique, in which the blood is literally spun in a centrifuge and re-injected into the injured joint in order to accelerate healing. That sounds somewhat different or cutting edge at first glance but apparently it's not. Despite this apparently rudimentary treatment, it certainly didn't stop a whole lot of athletes and sports figures from travelling north of the border to seek him out. It should also be mentioned that Galea himself has admitted he uses HGH for himself, but never prescribed it to athletes (my B.S. Detector just exploded as soon as I heard Galea say that btw).

When news of Galea's arrest broke, the first "name" patient that emerged was Tiger Woods. As time and the investigation have moved forward, some other superstar names have come to the forefront. Alex Rodriguez, Huston Street, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Delgado either have spoken to or have appointments to meet with the Feds regarding the Galea case. What was said to the Feds is unknown at this point. It may just simply be the athletes confirming that Galea worked on their knees, and they never received HGH or any other Performance Enhancers from Dr. Galea. However, the term Benefit Of The Doubt, does not fly on this blog, especially when it comes to possible Drug Cheating.

That being the case, there are a few things that arouse my curiosity, some of which include why would all these players, specifically New York based players, actively seek out a Canadian Doctor for simple knee treatment? How did they find him? How did the guys referring these players to Galea know how to find him? Apparently Dr. Richard Steadman, the same doctor whose clinic operated on Kobe Bryant's knee in 2003, is among one of the main referral sources for Galea. Still though, it seems a little too random that they would all be so willing to travel to Toronto on a referral for simple knee treatments?

Another curious question that comes up is why indeed are the Feds talking to all of these players with such frequency and urgency? The most obvious case where this type of behavior from the Feds took place was BALCO . As a result of the investigation, and some nice Grand Jury testimony leakage, the biggest Doping In Sports scandal was exposed, of which Major League Baseball-specifically the past decade, has never fully recovered from.

All these little coincidences and reminders beg the overall largest question to be asked which is : Is this the beginning of another storm of drug cheating surrounding Major League Baseball players, Olympians, NFL players, and The Goliath Of Golf? Is this as big, or possibly bigger than the BALCO case, in terms of inter-agency cooperation, public disclosure, and re-examination of the legitimacy of certain sports achievements? Or is this simply a case of a whole lot of smoke but no fire?

The problem is, we might never know. It took a crooked lawyer talking to two reporters in order for BALCO to fully come to light. ESPN certainly won't be devoting anyone to this story full time since they are still in bed with MLB. One thing's for sure though, if this were to be BALCO Part II, Bud Selig might finally understand that there is no "moving on" from the steroid era, unless he really is interested in getting to the bottom of the steroid era. Somehow I don't see that happening either...

Bad To Worse

Well a lookey what we have here!!! Apparently a Canadian Doctor was busted at the U.S.-Canadian border with Human Growth Hormone and Actovegin, which is a controversial drug that is extracted from calf's blood that is thought to increase injury recovery. Doctor Anthony Galea was arrested on October 15, and has been under investigation by both U.S. and Canadian authorities for illegally prescribing and distributing Performance Enhancing Drugs for some time. What's unusual is that this doctor is the same doctor who has treated Tiger Woods, Dara Torres, and other NFL and Canadian Football League players. Now comes word that he's also treated MLB players too.

People may recall Dara Torres (the "SHIM" pictured above next to Tiger) decided that at age 41 to comeback to Olympic Swimming. She became the first woman ever to swim in the Olympics past the age of 40, and also mysteriously swam faster than she has ever swam in her life, AFTER turning 41 years old! She claims that Doctor Galea only "drained her knee", and otherwise did not treat her.

Tiger on the other hand, has long been the subject of questions regarding his muscular physique, particularly after coming back from his knee surgery. So far, Woods has not denied being treated by Doctor Galea.

While there's way too much smoke to determine what if anything this doctor has done, and whom he has done it to, there's still some fire to this. Doctor Galea already has admitted to taking HGH himself, and is known as a "pioneer" in his industry. Usually with stories like this, the term "benefit of the doubt" no longer applies, and it would not be surprising in the least if this is BALCO Part II.