[BonzoHansen]

I hate A-Rod, but I think he is getting the shaft here. I have since this broke last weekend. Who leaked this? What is in it for them? Why not the whole list. It all stinks. To be honest leave the guy alone, I mean I do not care where he goes on vacation or if he is dating Methuselah, oops, I mean Madonna. Enough already.

I also think the MLB Players Union screwed up royally and that may be the bigger story in the long run.

Here, article in today’s WSJ, I added some notes & some highlighting

For A-Rod, Placebos Might've Worked Better

Which moment of President Obama's Monday press conference on the stimulus package was more stupefying: that a Washington Post correspondent asked what the president thought about Alex Rodriguez's admission that he had used steroids or that the president replied? For the record, President Obama said he was depressed by the revelation -- aren't we all? It's fortunate for our national well being that Britney Spears wasn't also having a bad week. (I couldn’t believe that idiot asked BO that)

From the maelstrom of words in the wake of Saturday's Sports Illustrated story (by Selena Roberts and David Epstein) that in 2003 Alex Rodriguez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, a few significant facts have finally emerged.

Mr. Rodriguez has admitted using Primobolan and testosterone from 2001 to 2003; no penalty was attached to the use of such substances before the Basic Agreement between the players and Major League Baseball went into effect in 2004. Primobolan is not a prescription drug, and legal penalties for its use range from minimal to nonexistent; testosterone is a legal prescription drug.

Though both steroids are popular among athletes, it isn't certain what effect, if any, they have on performance in baseball. "It's almost impossible to say," says Will Carroll, author of "The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems." "The main reason for baseball players to take PEDs is to increase power, but hitting a baseball has so much to do with hand-eye coordination, and there's no clear indication that testosterone and Primobolan help you hit a baseball better."

Mr. Rodriguez's entry in the record books tends to support this. From 1998 to 2000, while playing for the Seattle Mariners, he hit just 51 home runs in his two home ball parks (the Mariners moved in July 1999) and 74 home runs on the road. As ESPN.com's Rob Neyer notes, statistics generated on the road are "usually considered a more genuine measure of a hitter's power, as a single ball park might inflate or deflate home run totals." From 2001 to 2003, after being traded to the Texas Rangers and playing his home games at The Ballpark at Arlington, Texas -- regarded as a hitter's park -- he hit 86 home runs at home and 70 on the road.

If the PEDs A-Rod took increased his power in his home park, one wonders why they did nothing to improve his power in other American League stadiums.

That, of course, is not the issue the media seem to be addressing. The main issue is . . . Well, since baseball had no penalty at the time Mr. Rodriguez used the drugs and there is no evidence that they improved his performance, what is the major issue? According to Marvin Miller, former head and founder of the Major League Baseball Players Association, "There is a major issue, one which virtually no one has mentioned, namely Alex Rodriguez's civil rights."

Mr. Miller was referring to the leaking of information from the test results. In 2003, the union and MLB agreed to anonymous testing of 1,198 players to determine the extent of drug use in the sport. It was agreed that if 5% of the players tested positive, then random testing would be implemented in 2004. The linchpin of the agreement was that the names of the players who tested positive would not be revealed to the teams or the athletes. When results indicated that 104 players had used some type of PED -- at least 104 is the number now being given, though it has not been confirmed, nor were the samples retested to make sure the initial findings were accurate -- the agreement for random drug testing was activated.

On Nov. 19, 2003, only six days after the testing was finalized, a grand jury subpoena requested by federal agents investigating the Balco steroids scandal was issued for the actual test samples, which were at a lab in Long Beach, Calif. The union requested that government lawyers withdraw the subpoena for all the 2003 test results. And when they refused, the union filed papers asking for clarification on what the government was entitled to. The next day, however, all samples were seized, not just samples from the 10 players associated with the Balco investigation.

In April 2004, both the baseball commissioner's office and the players union were dismayed to receive a report from federal officials that listed the names of the 104 players believed to have tested positive. How could that have happened if the tests were anonymous? Apparently, says a source connected with the union, the lab's code was cracked and the samples were identified.

Fast forward to this past Saturday, when the SI story was released. We're now left with three major unanswered questions: Who made the leak, why did they leak it, and why was Alex Rodriguez's name the only one leaked?

No one can be sure why A-Rod's was the only name mentioned, but as baseball's most highly paid and publicized player, and the only player to be publicly linked with Madonna, outing him would have generated the most publicity.

As to who did it and why, there's a very short list of candidates, says Mr. Miller. "MLB, the union and the federal investigators all have the information, and if the first two had anything to gain by revealing a name on the list, I can't imagine what that would be."

Meanwhile, after more than five years of litigation, the union's lawsuit to recover the 2003 test results is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and might end in the Supreme Court. And at least 103 other players will be having some uneasy nights.