GFW posted on March 26, 2010 09:34 AM
Gamblers Final Word, has learned Albert Pujols the St.Louis Cardinal's slugger was among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to Lawyers with knowledge of the results.
Some of baseball’s most cherished story lines of the past decade have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs, including the accomplishments of record-setting home run hitters and dominating pitchers. Now, one of the most feared sluggers in Major League Baseball has been linked to doping.
Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were not destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.
Six others have been tied to positive tests from that year: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Grimsley, David Segui and David Ortiz. Bonds, baseball’s career home runs leader, was not on the list, although federal agents seized his 2003 sample and had it retested. Those results showed the presence of steroids, according to court documents.
The information about Pujols, was obtained through conversations with lawyers that are connected to the 2003 test. The lawyers spoke anonymously to Gamblers Final Word, because the testing information was under seal by a court order. The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected. Pujols, has repeatedly denied any use of performance enhancing drugs and has also went on record with those statements. This spring, Pujols has been linked to numerous trade rumors with the Phillies (Ryan Howard), both teams have denied the rumors.
As time leaches forward it’s becoming painfully obvious that anyone who achieved prominence in the early part of this decade did so with whatever aide steroids can provide. Mr. Pujols joins a distinguished fraternity of PED abusers/deniers that includes but isn’t limited to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Miggy Tejada, Jason Giambi and Mark McGwire. Hundreds of others have been fingered directly through the Mitchell report or through other conjecture like the tomes of Jose Canseco. Many rational people that don’t have sports talk radio shows or column inches in papers and magazines are pretty content with the way that MLB handles drug abusers- doling out punishment in accordance with the repeated nature of their use. Many more are not as concerned about what players did or didn’t do before their were specifically rules outlining that banned substances were punishable by suspension and fines. I think I speak on behalf of the majority when I say emphatically- we’re over it.
More updates will come, as any more news breaks on this story....
