Very cool yum as usual

I know this isnt Yankee related , but its the closest thread to baseball I could easily find......

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Mark McGwire Admits Using Steroids285
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1/11/2010 3:11 PM ET By Ed Price

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Ed Price
Ed Price is a Senior MLB Writer for FanHouse
Far from election to the Hall of Fame in four chances and about to re-enter baseball after a long absence, Mark McGwire on Monday admitted to using steroids.

McGwire -- who set a single-season record with 70 home runs in 1998, a feat that is credited with helping baseball rebound from the 1994 players' strike -- said he used steroids in the 1989-90 offseason, 1993 and "on occasion throughout the nineties, including during the 1998 season" in a statement released by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Part of the statement reads:
I'm sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn't take any and I had bad years when I didn't take any. I had good years when I took steroids and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn't have done it and for that I'm truly sorry.
The team, for whom McGwire played in '98, had hired McGwire as hitting coach in October but had yet to face the media. His reputation took a major hit -- and the suspicion that he used steroids multiplied -- when in a 2005 hearing before a House of Representatives committee he declined to address the matter, saying only, "I'm not going to go into the past or talk about my past. I'm here to make a positive influence on this," and "My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family and myself."

Now he has answered the questions.

Except that The Associated Press reports that McGwire also used human growth hormone, citing a person close to McGwire as the source. McGwire did not mention HGH in his statement.

"I am pleased that Mark McGwire has confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances as a player," said commissioner Bud Selig in a statement. "This statement of contrition, I believe, will make Mark's reentry into the game much smoother and easier.

"The so-called Steroid Era -- a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances -- is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark's admission today is another step in the right direction."

McGwire ranks eighth all-time with 583 home runs, including 245 in a four-season span (1996-99). But in four appearances on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot, he has appeared on 23.5, 23.6, 21.9 and 23.7 percent of the ballots -- with 75 percent required for induction.

Much like Alex Rodriguez, who admitted to steroids use last year, McGwire blamed the culture of the time:
I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.
The first public accusation of McGwire regarding steroids use came in 2005, by former Oakland "Bash Brothers" partner and admitted user Jose Canseco. In his book Juiced, Canseco said he personally injected McGwire "more times than I can remember."

In a phone interview with the AP, McGwire said he called commissioner Bud Selig and Cardinals manager Tony La Russa on Monday to personally apologize.

McGwire is scheduled to appear on MLB Network Monday at 7 PM ET in an interview with Bob Costas.

La Russa praised McGwire for his admission of guilt.

"No one on the teams I managed worked harder or better than Mark. And now, his willingness to admit mistakes, express his regret, and explain the circumstances that led him to use steroids add to my respect for him," the St. Louis manager said in a statement. "I've defended Mark because I observed him develop his unique power hitting skill through a rigorous physical and fundamental work out program."

Both team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. and general manager John Mozeliak offered words of encouragement for their new hitting coach.

"Mark is going to make an outstanding hitting coach," Mozeliak said. "He's a smart student of the game and he has a lot of valuable lessons he can teach our ballplayers. I'm glad Mark has gotten this off his chest and he can proudly begin the next chapter of his life."

"No one condones what Mark did more than 10 years ago," DeWitt said, "but we hired him as our hitting coach because we know there are many contributions that Mark can and will make to our team and to this game."

The statement in full:
Now that I have become the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, I have the chance to do something that I wish I was able to do five years ago.

I never knew when, but I always knew this day would come. It's time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected. I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize. I remember trying steroids very briefly in the 1989/1990 offseason and then after I was injured in 1993, I used steroids again. I used them on occasion throughout the nineties, including during the 1998 season.

I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.

During the mid-'90s, I went on the DL seven times and missed 228 games over five years. I experienced a lot of injuries, including a rib cage strain, a torn left heel muscle, a stress fracture of the left heel, and a torn right heel muscle. It was definitely a miserable bunch of years and I told myself that steroids could help me recover faster. I thought they would help me heal and prevent injuries too.

I'm sure people will wonder if I could have hit all those home runs had I never taken steroids. I had good years when I didn't take any and I had bad years when I didn't take any. I had good years when I took steroids and I had bad years when I took steroids. But no matter what, I shouldn't have done it and for that I'm truly sorry.

Baseball is really different now -- it's been cleaned up. The Commissioner and the Players Association implemented testing and they cracked down, and I'm glad they did.

I'm grateful to the Cardinals for bringing me back to baseball. I want to say thank you to Cardinals owner Mr. DeWitt, to my GM, John Mozeliak, and to my manager, Tony La Russa. I can't wait to put the uniform on again and to be back on the field in front of the great fans in Saint Louis. I've always appreciated their support and I intend to earn it again, this time as hitting coach. I'm going to pour myself into this job and do everything I can to help the Cardinals hitters become the best players for years to come.

After all this time, I want to come clean. I was not in a position to do that five years ago in my Congressional testimony, but now I feel an obligation to discuss this and to answer questions about it. I'll do that, and then I just want to help my team.

I am glad Mac came clean and I am glad that baseball has been cleaned up, but Don't forget guys..."steroid era". How many pitchers on juice did Maris face? the whole league was on the sauce so leave the record books alone and I think baseball would be remiss in keeping these great players out of the hall.... Fans act like any regular Joe could stick a needle in his &%$$ and be home run king.... Sorry it doesn't work that way. great players are great players period.


Thanks for posting Glimmer.

I enjoyed this article from the NYTimes on wooden bats ....Making Baseball Bats a Big Seller

Jeff Swensen for The New York Times

By KEN BELSON
Published: March 23, 2010


In the bottom of the ninth inning in an otherwise meaningless spring training game last week, Angel Pagan of the Mets stepped to the plate with a man on and his team down a run. In his only at-bat of the game, Pagan hit the ball over the right-field fence for a game-winning two-run homer.

The day could not have gone any better for Pagan, who is trying to win a job in the starting lineup, and for Mike Gregory, the vice president for sales at BWP Bats, a boutique bat maker in Brookville, Pa. Gregory was in the Mets’ clubhouse in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that morning and gently persuaded Pagan to try one of his maple bats, even though Pagan uses bats from a rival company, Verdero.

“It’s only once, but I’ll have to keep seeing how it feels,” Pagan said after the game.

In the quirky world of wooden bats, Pagan’s game-ending home run was a huge endorsement. Major leaguers are on television often and widely imitated, so bat makers are desperate to get their wares in their hands. Yet many players are also superstitious and resist changing their equipment, bats included.

Louisville Slugger, which controls about half the market for wooden bats and is synonymous with the product, has little trouble finding buyers, including stars like Derek Jeter. But for BWP, which makes 35,000 bats a year and has been around for only a decade, every player counts.

Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins and Johnny Damon of the Detroit Tigers are the best known of the 150 or so minor and major leaguers who use BWP. The company also supplies bats to many of the minor league affiliates of 10 major league clubs, including the Mets and the Yankees. But with about 30 companies approved to sell to major league teams, the competition is stiff.

“The challenge for all of us is to get the business to grow,” said Gregory, who travels most of the season from stadium to stadium to meet players, equipment managers and coaches and to take orders and requests for new models. “It’s based on service, delivery time and ability to meet their specifications.”

But BWP Bats has something few other companies do: its own forests and mills. The company is a subsidiary of Brookville Wood Products, which has harvested and processed wood for the furniture industry for 44 years. A two-hour drive from Pittsburgh, the company has 5,000 acres of land that includes some of the hardest maple trees in the country.

For years, the mill also sold billets — the cylinders of wood that are turned into bats — to Louisville Slugger and other bat makers. But in the late 1990s, as BWP and other furniture makers lost ground to cheaper competitors in China, the company rethought its strategy.

BWP had laid off dozens of workers — it is down to 100 employees, from 250 at its peak — and was desperate for new revenue, so it started making its own bats. The decision was auspicious because the housing bubble later burst, sending furniture and flooring sales reeling further.

To initially get up to speed, the company’s owner, Joe Mitchell, asked Louisville Slugger to teach BWP the basics: how to choose the right wood, how to use lathes to turn the billets into bats and how to finish the bats. In the first few years, the company had trouble making bats the same way over and over, something that players demand.

“It’s one thing to know wood and another to know baseball,” Gregory said.

Indeed, to the untrained eye, all baseball bats look about the same at the outset. At the BWP Bats factory, piles of billets 37 inches long and 2 ¾inches in diameter lie stacked like cordwood. Their weight in ounces is written on one end of the billet: the heavier the billet, the denser the wood.

Bats, though, are segregated based on grain. The billets with straighter grains and heavier weights are put aside for the professionals, because those billets make for more solid bats, which can cost $85 each. The others are turned into bats for the retail market, which makes up about 80 percent of BWP Bats’ annual sales of about $4 million.

The profit margin for a bat sold to a retail outlet is about 20 percent, Gregory said, compared with 15 percent for bats sold to professionals. But the marketing value of having a pro use a BWP bat more than offsets the smaller profit.

For decades, ash was the most popular wood for bats. But once Barry Bonds in particular started using maple bats in the latter part of his career, maple became something of the wood of choice. In general, maple is a denser wood than ash, and players figure that it will give them more power when they make contact. Half of all major leaguers use maple bats, and about 80 percent of the bats that BWP makes are maple.

BWP keeps measurements for about 250 models in its computerized lathe. Each model has a different diameter from the barrel to the handle. Billets are locked into the lathe, a model is selected on the computer and, in less than two minutes, the billet is shaved according to specifications.

The bats are then sawed at the ends, sanded and sent to the factory’s basement, called the Bat Cave, where they are treated, finished with different colors and engraved. Teams order bats by the dozen for their players, with more bats for the stars. BWP will send as many as 100 bats a year to players like Damon, who breaks them more frequently than most players.

The business of making bats is tougher now, partly because of Damon. Alarmed by the rise in the number of broken bats, and findings that showed that maple bats were three times more likely to shatter than bats made with ash, Major League Baseball instituted a host of rules last season to ensure that the best possible wood is used.

Bat makers now place ink dots on the handle of their maple bats to better identify the straightness of the grain. If the grain is straight, the ink will bleed in the wood from the handle to the barrel, which is preferable. Sugar maple and birch bats must have a clear finish so that the grain can be inspected easily, something that disappointed players who like bats that are all black. Each bat now has a serial number, and companies are audited.

This year, certain types of softer maple wood bats have been banned in the minor leagues.

“We get as close to looking at every single bat that we can see in a team’s inventory,” said Scott Drake, the vice president for operations at Timberco of Sun Prairie, Wis., a wood-certification company hired by Major League Baseball.

To pay for the inspection program, Major League Baseball doubled the annual fee, to $10,000, that BWP and other bat makers must pay to sell to the pros. The companies also must carry $10 million in liability insurance, twice as much as before, which costs BWP an extra $10,000 a year in premiums.

The extra scrutiny on maple bats has led some players, like Jason Bay, to switch to ash. But many players, Bay said, will stick with maple if only because they are continuing to have success with it, something Gregory is banking on.

Bay said, “In baseball, we don’t call it superstition, we call it routine.”


A version of this article appeared in print on March 24, 2010, on page

Rodriguez Limits Discussion to Baseball
By PAT BORZI
Published: March 24, 2010

Alex Rodriguez is expected to meet with prosecutors on Friday in the investigation of a Canadian-based doctor.
Predictably, Rodriguez had little to say.
“If there are no baseball questions, I have nothing to talk about,” Rodriguez said. When someone did ask a baseball question — namely, if he would be playing Thursday in Sarasota against Baltimore — Rodriguez said yes.
Rodriguez is expected to meet Friday with prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office in Buffalo, which is handing the investigation. Authorities are trying to determine if Galea distributed performance-enhancing drugs in the United States.

Galea told The Associated Press he gave Rodriguez anti-inflammatory drugs last year for an inflamed hip. Rodriguez has never said whether he was treated by Galea, but investigators want to talk to him.

Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said Rodriguez would miss Friday night’s exhibition game with Philadelphia. It was not clear when Rodriguez would return.

“From what I read and understand, we may not have him on Friday,” Girardi said. “And that’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”

So Girardi’s plans to play Rodriguez three consecutive days were dashed for the second time in less than a week. Rodriguez played Friday and Saturday, and he was in the lineup for Sunday’s game, which was canceled because of rain.

Wednesday night Rodriguez went 2 for 3 with two runs batted in in the Yankees’ 3-1 victory over Washington, raising his average to .357. His run-scoring triple off the right-field wall was his fourth extra-base hit in his last three games. Girardi said Rodriguez will play Thursday, and would have started Friday.

Girardi said he had not thought much about how disruptive Rodriguez’s latest off-field issue might be to Rodriguez or the team. “There are no accusations,” Girardi said. “It seems to be about somebody else. It’s disruptive in that he won’t be here Friday, but beyond that, I’m not too concerned.

“I’ll sit down and talk to him a little bit about it, but I won’t get into a whole lot of details because he’s probably not able to give me a lot of details. That’s the way the system works.”

On baseball matters he could control, Girardi met with his coaches and Yankee officials after batting practice and chose a fifth starter, presumably Phil Hughes. Girardi would not confirm that, though the announcement could come Thursday. The choice appeared to be between Hughes and Joba Chamberlain, with the other likely ending up in the bullpen.

“We heard all the voices we wanted to hear,” Girardi said. Hughes gave up three home runs in four and a third innings against the Phillies on Monday, but Girardi said Hughes threw the ball well and was victimized by the wind at Bright House Field.

After naming the fifth starter, Girardi said he would tackle an order for the bullpen. Chamberlain could slide into a setup role in front of Mariano Rivera, a position he has excelled at before.

Girardi said he is also considering keeping two left-handers in the bullpen, since Boone Logan (2.57 earned run average in seven innings) and Royce Ring (0.00 in four and two-thirds innings) have both had good springs. In that case the Yankees would drop one long reliever, Alfredo Aceves or Sergio Mitre, and use Chan Ho Park in a pinch.

“There are times he threw three innings out of the bullpen last year,” Girardi said of Park. “He can also give you some distance.”

INSIDE PITCH

JOE GIRARDI said he supported Major League Baseball’s decision to eliminate the off day between Games 4 and 5 of the league championship series, even though last year it allowed the Yankees to go with three starters instead of four. “It’s O.K. with me,” he said. “It is a lot of off days. It worked out well for us, but it is a lot of off days, and players do like continuity.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 25, 2010, on page

Joba you did a wonderful job pitching and robinson good way to hit the ball outta the park an congratulations!

Josh Beckett is a punk. Sorry Boston fans, you can't say anything to defend him that wouldn't make you look foolish.

I'm sure Burnett or Joba will take care of business over the weekend. I can easily see Chamberlain drilling Youk since Youk is scared to death of him.

I don't think Beckett hit them on purpose since there were runners on base..........

Then again, you never know......but I don't think so.

Sabathia already took care of business and hit Pedroia........

Then it backfired....a 2 run homer was hit and Pedroia scored.

Brw, there's a rumor going around that Boston will release Ortiz.

I would like to say yes but you have to remember the uniform he is wearing and the uniform he was throwing at. Let's face it. Josh Beckett can paint both sides of the plate at 96 mph per hour. He has exceptional control of every pitch known to man except a knuckleball.

Pitching inside or throwing at a player after a home run or after any other incident for payback is and always will be a part of the game....Now I will throw in one caveat, hit a player in the head on purpose and you shouldn't just get penalized but you also get locked up.

David Ortiz has accomplished absolutely nothing to help the team right now but it will be hard to take him out of the lineup because of the possibility of him hitting his way out of this slump like he did last year. People still think he's capable of being the Papi of old, but those days are over.