Let's Just Send Them to Bed Without Any Supper

One run in seven innings against Wandy Rodriguez. Seven scoreless frames against Chris Sampson, who was making the first start of his major league career. A single tally on a first inning solo home run by Tony Womack against native-Conch Bronson Arroyo. Not to mention, nary a scratch hit last night against former Cub reliever Kent Mercker and his 6.39 ERA. Not good.

But please do not fret Cubs' fans. I believe that I have solved the team's offensive woes and season-long allergy to the home run. The solution is actually pretty simple. Sign Jason Grimsley and sign him quick. Just make sure that he brings along his "kits" and his coffee pots and all of his Latino friends. At this point, the Cubs need all the help they can get.

Ahhhh yes, good ol' Jason Grimsley. Major league baseball's answer to "Sammy the Bull" Gravano and Linda Tripp (did you know that after the whole Clinton-Lewinsky-Cigar affiar, Tripp had extensive plastic surgery -- a good idea -- and now runs a year-round Christmas store in Middleburg, Virginia -- perhaps not such a good idea).

Look, I am not going to use this space to simply rehash my feelings on the steroid controversy in baseball (if you are a newbie to the Random Thoughts, I encourage you to read the March 30 post "The Plague on the House of Baseball"), but to let the Grimsley/ HGH story pass by without comment, in my mind, would be foolish.

First, a little background about the central figure in the scandal. Grimsley's 15-year major league career includes stints with seven different major league teams (not to mention time spent in the spring training camps of three more teams). This essentially makes him baseball's equivalent of basketball journeyman (in every sense of the word) Tyrone Corbin. For the record, former DePaul star Corbin played for nine teams in his 16-year NBA career. It also means that he has played with (and presumably has knowledge of the habits of) hundred of current and former players, including intriguing possibilities Steroid Sammy, Rafael Palmeiro, Miguel Tejada, Len Dykstra, Darren Daulton, Albert Belle, (a young) Manny Ramirez, Jose Canseco, Alfonso Soriano, and, yes, Thing Two.

Interesting...

Oh, the stories he can tell.

Grimsley is also the guy who was once traded by the Astros to the Phillies straight up for Curt Schilling (a move that now makes Jim Hendry's trade of Kid Corey for two future clubhouse attendants and a bunting manual look downright reasonable) and the guy who crawled through the U.S. Comiskular ceiling to retrieve Albert Belle's suspicious bat. Good teammate, huh?

But now Grimsley has named names and spilled many of baseball's dirty little secrets. How players have switched to Human Growth Hormone in response to the new more stringent steroid testing policy. How one player had back acne that was so bad that it would make even John Merrick and Quasimodo recoil in horror. How amphetamines or "greenies" were as common in major league clubhouses as Budweiser, playing cards and Alyssa Milano.

Reading about the investigation and the recent search of Grimsley's Scottsdale home has raised a number of questions in my mind...

(1) Reportedly thirteen federal agents searched the home for six hours. Thirteen agents? Did they call in Curtis Manning and Jack Bauer? What in the heck did they expect to find?

Thirteen agents barging into a home, turning over mattresses, ripping paintings off the wall and stealing loose change and DVDs sounds straight out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film. It is not as if they were busting into 50 Cent's palatial estate looking for a cache of semi-automatics or a crack house on 73rd Street. It is my understanding that they were searching the gated-community home in an affluent area of the Valley of a man who they had no reason to consider a safety threat (I sure hope they remembered to wipe their feet on the way in). And they were looking, not for a cooler full of severed heads preserved in jars, but rather for expensive performance enhancing drugs, receipts and other evidence of an alleged Grimsley-led HGH and anabolic steroid ring. The use of thirteen agents sounds an awful lot like posturing and showing off to the media.

(2) Facts clearly show that the search should not have been a surprise to Grimsley. Did they mistake him for Stephen Hawking Hairston Jr.?

To understand this question a little background is definitely in order. The search that occurred only days ago was not Grimsley's first contact with the federal investigation. Grimsley's singing like a canary actually occurred way back in April when federal invesigators interviewed him about a known delivery of two HGH "kits." An "anticipatory warrant" was issued and Grimsley voluntarily accompanied agents to a remote location to be questioned about the delivery, his involvement in performance enhancing substances and his experience with baseball and illegal drugs. His statements were made voluntarily and formed the basis for the warrant under which the search of two days ago occurred. So, once again, what were they expecting to find and how stupid did they assume Grimsley to be?

I don't know about you, but I live my life under some fairly basic rules. (1) Be kind to others; (2) Maintain family as the number one priority; and (3) Get rid of all evidence of crimes, misdeeds and other wrongdoing before the authorities knock on the door (better make that four rules, I forgot about not being in the least bit offensive to any race, creed or ethnicity. Hee Hee). In other words, if I am Jason Grimsley and I have already been served with an anticipatory warrant and spilled my guts to the feds, I'm cleaning house. And I'm getting rid of everything. Natalee Holloway's body...gone. The Lindbergh baby...buh-bye. The remains of Jimmy Hoffa...sold on E-Bay for $50 to some kid in Kalamazoo. But that is not all. Past NCAA Tournament brackets from Rick Neuheisel's pool, "Super Bowl sqaures" grids (frickin' John Fox...kick the dang field goal!), the Whatchamacallit bar I stole from Osco Drug in 2nd grade, my bootleg copy of the Grateful Dead playing Sing Sing while hopped up on Guatamalen insanity peppers, and the answer key from Mrs. Nank's Washington Irving Elementary School spelling quiz...all mysteriously having found their way into the neighborhood bonfire. Everything.

My guess is all thirteen agents walked out of there with nothing more troubling than a box of Sucrets.

(3) What in the heck is the point?

Once again, if you would like to (re)read my opinion on the performance enhancing drugs and sports issue, please go back to the post of March 30. That said, in essence, this really is nothing more than a modern day tribute to 1692 and the Salem With Trials -- to speak nothing of McCarthyism in the early 1950's. I know that MLB has reported that George Mitchell is heading up the steroid investigation, but I am more likely to believe that it is either the ghost of town doctor William Griggs (now that is a little too Dennis Miller-esque) or the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy himself.

Let's review the recent steroid allegation history. Jose Canseco's book is published and people universally cried "liar!" Then suddenly new and frightening facts come out and Jose doesn't look like such a blowhard anymore with people beginning to believe that he may actually have been telling the truth. But what has been done recently in response to Canseco's specific claims and to those persons whom he pointed the finger at? Has there been any real public questioning of Juan Gonzalez, Miguel Tejada or the human weight loss phenomenon that is Ivan Rodriguez? Oh sure, they held those stupid Congressional hearings where Mark McGwire sounded like an idiot and Steroid Sammy suddenly forgot how to speak English, but c'mon. Canseco's book is certainly still mentioned, but his accusations have fallen largely on either deaf of uninterested ears.

And what about Steroid Sammy? Does anyone still honestly doubt that he was juicing during his entire tenure with the Cubs? It seems to me that now that Sammy is salsa dancing or milking goats or sellling counterfeit jeans or whatever the heck he is doing in the Dominican Republic, the world has forgotten about his troubling "legacy" and subscribing to the ostrich theory of "out of sight, out of mind."

Should I cross over into the world of the NFL and mention the Carolina Panthers? It was only a little more than a year ago when reports surfaced that Panther players were prescribed steroids shortly before playing in the 2004 Super Bowl. According to the reports, a number of players were regular visitors to alternative medicine doctor James Shortt who was (and presumably still is) under investigation for steroid trafficking and distribution. It was a report that certainly got the sporting world's attention and managed to keep it...for about three days.

Heck, even Jason Giambi has regained his status as a hero in the Bronx...

The bottom line is that this story is going to burn up the airwaves for a couple of days, maybe even weeks, and then fade away. Does the public want baseball cleaned up? Absolutely. Does it really matter in the end. In my opinion, no.

(3a) Maybe there is a point...but what are we going to do with the players who are guilty?

If this is a witch hunt as I allege, perhaps we should just toss them into the nearest lake and see if they float. Maybe we should burn them at the stake. How about having them drawn and quartered? There hasn't been a good public hanging in awhile that I am aware of.

I mean, what are we really talking about here? Asterisks and disclaimers? Kicking them out of baseball? Everyone recognizes that the 1985-2005 will likely be forevermore known as the steroid era and, at this point we can only hope that we are on the tail end of an ugly period in baseball history. I love sports history as much as anyone, but my concern for the sanctity of records and whether in 1926, Al Simmons only had to hit the ball 307' feet at old Shibe Park/ Connie Mack Stadium for a home run or whether a juiced up Barry Bonds hit a juiced up ball thrown by a juiced up Jason Grimsley ranks right up there with my concern for whether Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to get married now that baby Shiloh Nouvel has been born (you think that name is bad? Try going through like with the name "Audio Science").

As always, this is just my humble, unimportant opinion. What's yours?

* I'm happy to see that the White Sox continue to live by Grinder Ball Rule #13: "The maximum time that should ever go by without Ozzie Guillen saying something idiotic is 18, nah...better make that 12, hours." In response to the news about the Grimsley investigation, Ozzie commented (and I quote) "That man is a criminal. When you steal something, and then people come to your house and you're involved with [HGH], in my country, you're a criminal.'' Oh, in your country, he is a criminal. Okay. Got it.

Lest we forget that according to Guillen, whose apparently got his law degree in the offseason from Hollywood Upstairs Law College or somewhere, threatening farmhands with a machete, pouring gasoline on them and trying to light them on fire is not a crime and former major league reliever Ugueth Urbina is being wrongly held in a Caracas, Venezuela jail as a result of such allegations. Are they still only allegations? Yes. But, unless we are to forget Ozzie's spring comments, he knows that Urbina is innocent and Grimsley is without a doubt a criminal.

Look Ozzie, you have proven to be an excellent manager who has the ability to get the best out of your players. You have won a World Series title. How about shutting your mouth, just once? Some of your comments are downright embarrassing.

* Gopherball Glendon...glad to see you are back.

* Finally, reports indicate that Kerry Wood's shoulder is bothering him again and he is listed as questionable for Sunday's scheduled start against the Reds. Should Wood not be able to go, young right hander Carlos Marmol would get the start. Marmol is fresh out of Double A ball, but, in his two relief appearances this season, has looked like he has electric stuff. You know what? If Kerry Wood's shoulder doesn't hurt and he is able to go, I'm requesting that Thing One or Phil Nevin (not like he has anything else to do...I mean it is not like the guy is playing) drop an anvil on his arm. At this point, I'm more interested in seeing what Marmol can do than watching the future member of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox or Iowa Cubs pitch 4 and 2/3 medicore innings. Bring on Carlos Marmol!!! Heck, at this point, part of me would rather see Carlos Santana, Carlos Solis or Carlos from the Magic School Bus take the mound instead of Kerry.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Fins up!

*** For those of you interested in reading the Grimsley affidavit and warrant, it is available at:
http://www.azcentral.com/pdfs/060706grimsley.pdf