THIS always has been the problem with baseball’s handling of the steroid mess. Everyone always has had the same approach, and the same wish: If you close your eyes hard enough, plug your ears long enough, raise your voice loud enough – deny, deny, deny – then one of these days everyone will wake up talking about something else.
Bud Selig led the brigade with that one, and he still is, unable to properly articulate what he thinks about Barry Bonds, about the book “Game of Shadows” that has cast such a pall over his sport, about whether the commissioner wants to have a full-blown investigation or not.
Everyone else takes a cue from him. Bonds is the main soloist in that chorus. But it extends everywhere, and in such an odd, through-the-looking glass way that Jason Giambi has been celebrated for being the last honest man in baseball, mostly because he didn’t perjure himself before the BALCO grand jury, partly because of that apology he issued 13 months ago, even though he never got around to mentioning what, exactly, he was apologizing for.
So, of course, this is the way Gary Sheffield has to go now. Sheffield’s another one who actually came off looking relatively good in this whole mess for a while, because he actually admitted in Sports Illustrated a year-and-a-half ago that he took the two famous designer steroids Cream and Clear, even though – big surprise – he insisted he wasn’t
aware of what exactly he was using when he did.
Well, the “Game of Shadows” net is a wide one, and it wasn’t aimed exclusively at toppling Bonds, as it turns out. When it hits bookstores today, there will be some pretty serious charges leveled at Sheffield which, if true, might not paint him the obsessive steroid fiend Bonds is purported to be but certainly places him in a far more sinister realm than he’s been willing to cop to.
Sheffield, according to the book’s authors, took injectable testosterone and human growth hormone in January 2002. Moreover, he attempted to maintain a relationship with Greg Anderson, Bonds’ trainer and chief chemist, after Sheffield and Bonds had their famous falling out that Sheffield detailed in an October 2004 article in Sports Illustrated.
If true, this is troubling and it is damning. After all, it was reasonable to believe all of the book’s Bonds revelations were true, because of the reporters’ meticulous reporting and their exhaustive accounting of who told them what, and where they received the information they did.
If that was good enough to hang Bonds, it’s plenty good enough to hang Sheffield, too. Just because he wears pinstripes doesn’t mean he has a bulletproof vest under his jersey.
Sheffield, predictably, retreated to baseball’s old reliable stand-by yesterday, when confronted with this information: Deny, deny, deny.
Asked if he ever did HGH, Sheffield flatly replied, “Nope.” Asked if the fact the book insists he did meant he was going to instruct his lawyers to sue in order to restore what remains of his good name, Sheffield said, “What can I do? I’m not gonna defend myself my whole life. That’s what you guys want; it doesn’t matter to me. Doesn’t matter one thing to me.”
It’s a curious response. Me, if I’m accused of plagiarism (the journalist’s equivalent to steroid abuse) and I know I didn’t do it, I’m going to scream my innocence until the inquisitors’ ears bleed, then I’m going to see how big a pile I can win in a libel suit. If I have truth on my side, I use it as a machete.
“I don’t have to say anything else about it,” Sheffield said. “I don’t need to say anything else. You can say what you want. At the end of the day it doesn’t stop what goes on with my life, and Barry.”
It doesn’t stop the story, either, or the prying fingers of a baseball public that demands answers for what happened during all those years the game toiled in the shadows.
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Growth spurt
Gary Sheffield allegedly took injectable testosterone and human growth hormone in January 2002, prior to his first of two seasons with the Braves. Here’s a look at Sheffield’s numbers before and since:
BEFORE — SINCE
14 Seasons 4
18.0 AB per HR 16.6
5 30 HR seasons 3
2 .600 SLG seasons 1
2 150 game seasons 3
Sheffield has hit 134 home runs since turning 33 years old. Here’s how he ranks among some all-time hitters from ages 33-36:
Player — HRs
Mark McGwire 225
Babe Ruth 195
Barry Bonds 193
Rafael Palmiero 176
Willie Mays 158
Hank Aaron 150
Andres Gallaraga 150
Gary Sheffield 134
Reggie Jackson 124
Stan Musial 124
