(Bud, not merely impressed, but agog at Jose’s use of the word “reverberate”.)
After a day at CSTB HQ watching the Congressional Hearings, I think Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheenan can rightfully say “I told you so.”
As Will Carroll pointed out yesterday, just 83 players tested positive for steroids in the first year of testing, and just a dozen did last season. The testing program in place appears to have been working long before the government decided to get involved. Today’s hearings have been driven largely by two disparate events: the already-questionable BALCO witch hunt, and the published rantings of a man who had little credibility in his time in the game.
(Aside: with all due respect to the parents of Ray Garibaldi, who have had to deal with unimaginable horror and sorrow, their testimony connecting their son’s suicide to the actions of MLB and its players has no place in today’s hearing. It’s an appeal to emotion with little to no basis in fact, and it’s impossible to counter. What, you think the questioning of the Garibaldis is going to match the intensity of the questioning of Bud Selig or Mark McGwire?)