The LA Times’ T.J. Simers had the dubious pleasure of speaking with Dodgers IF Jeff Kent on the telephone this week, and caught an earful about matters of integrity. Somehow, you just know the Bad Lieutenant will teach his children the importance of washing a truck properly always telling the truth (link taken from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory).
“I’d like to see every player take a blood test and have the samples frozen,” Kent (above) says, then waiting for the day when there’s a foolproof HGH test to identify the cheaters.
“Not everyone in the game is using HGH, but I would bet it still is being abused,” he says. “Why not have blood tests? If ultimately you want a clean game, then it needs to happen.
“They ought to be testing for drugs in the playoffs too. They never do that.”
“I hope people don’t think these are the only players doing steroids in the game,” Kent says. “These players were only the ones Mitchell had good evidence against.
“The Mitchell Report is probably just 1% of those who have cheated in the game. It gives a very small sampling of what was going on.
“Now we’re hearing about some guys who cheat and the phony excuses like I got hurt, so I just used HGH one time. Whether they are telling the truth or not, people are finally having to answer to some things.”
Kent’s name is in the Mitchell Report, and he’s just fine with that, Sen. George Mitchell crediting Kent with telling reporters in September, “Major League Baseball is trying to investigate the past so they can fix the future.”
Kent’s former Houston teammate, Roger Clemens, is also named in the report, and Clemens is certainly not fine with that.
“Roger has got himself in a corner,” Kent says. “And let me tell you, my boys are watching. We’re down here in Texas and he’s on the news every night, and they wanted to see the ’60 Minutes’ interview. My honest answer to them, ‘I don’t know.’
“The other day I took one of my boys to Target and he had a gift card to buy a video game. He said, ‘Dad, I could just rip this package open and put it in my pocket and nobody would ever know.’
“I told him, ‘It’s your choice, and go ahead and cheat Target if you want, but if you cheat there might come a time when you’re caught and thrown in jail or led off in handcuffs. Those are the consequences.”