(Team Giambi legal adviser J. Childs reacts to his client’s testimony : “who told you to use a balm? Do you even know what a balm is?”)
from Friday’s Newsday and Jon Heyman :
Give Jason Giambi – pleasure-seeking, bar-hopping, steroid-injecting, puffed-up fraud that he is – this much: At least he’s honest enough to admit a mistake or two hundred.
When the feds wave an orange jumpsuit in his face, anyway.
Coerced though he was, by admitting what amounts to steroid dependence, Giambi has taken the first step on the long road to decency. Here are the next few:
1) Apologize to fans.
2) Ask that any statistic or trace of him be expunged from record books, right down to his date of birth.
3) Offer to void the rest of a contract that pays him another sickening $82 million.
OK, now back to reality.
With the help of enablers, sycophants, girlfriends and “trainers,” one of whom was known to A’s players as “Dr. Feel Good,” plus that great defender of steroids, union big wheel Gene Orza, you just know Giambi will surely fight for every last centavo. His chosen lifestyle of hedonism isn’t cheap, after all.
Giambi already has pocketed $38 million, but his admitted habitual steroid use, combined with unspoken but easily provable over-the-top, ’round-the-clock partying, amount to a fraud on the Yankees, not to mention fans, who’ve paid puffed-up ticket prices to subsidize inflated muscles and paychecks.
Now that his production has withered to almost nothing as he’s transitioned from the physique of a he-man to Pee-wee Herman (not from cutting fat out of his diet, it turns out), he should realize it behooves him to settle with the Yankees. Because he is done here. A former Yankees official predicted the bad publicity would overwhelm him because he’s a “mental midget.” Not that he’s dumb, but he wilts under pressure. His grand jury testimony is Exhibit A.