According to Adam Rubin, the Mets clubhouse officials were all drug tested today, and are all free of performance enhancing substances.

What exactly is a PED for the press guy? Coffee for the long hours and malox for when the team drops big games or players give each other concussions? Either way, its good to see baseball is finally making sure people who do not actually play the game are not using steroids. Because thats a big step. Bench coaches, public relations directors, these guys have been juicing for years. And don’t even get me started on the banned substances by Keith’s arch enemy, the Padres ‘massage therapist.’

ESPN is now reporting that former Met clubhouse kid Kirk Radomksi will receive five years probation and a fine for his role in juicing baseball.

A fine of less than $20,000 seems…well kind of lenient, considering its alleged that he was one of the biggest suppliers not named BALCO. I get the probation, he avoids jail time since he named names and got McNamee on board as well. But considering that he probably raked in quite the hefty amounts and all with his dealings, and helped tarnish the sport in a way even Pete Rose didn’t, you’d think they could have set the number a little higher. I’m sure he can find a player who’s name hasn’t come up yet willing to cover the fine anyway.

Recently the Owners unanimously voted to extend Bud Selig’s contract for three more years. I’ve seen a lot of articles lately praising this move, saying it gives Selig time to finish his job of cleaning up baseball, to work on his legacy, to continue the peace he’s kept between labor and owners.

Its all a bunch of hooey.

Selig does not deserve three more years. His legacy should be the Steroid Era and the Mitchell Report, and if the owners really want to bring about the change in regards to players and PEDs they should have started with the man who let it happen, Selig.

Is Selig solely to blame? Of course not. The players are the ones who did the drugs. The trainers supplied them. Fellow players, coaches and owners looked the other way. We the fan even continued to come out in record numbers and spend more and more on the produce despite overwhelming signs that our beloved stars were juicing. But the buck has to stop somewhere, and that somewhere is the man with the ultimate authority, Selig. He could implement tougher testing, tougher rules. He could use the power of the lifetime ban, banishing the worst offenders to the same baseball limbo occupied by other big time cheaters and rouges like Pete Rose and the Black Sox. But instead, he’s for the most part sat idly by.

He received praise for not clapping and supporting Barry Bonds, and while he didn’t enthusiastically support Bonds he didn’t exactly go out of his way to find the truth behind the cloud of doubt that surrounded one of baseballs most suspected steroid users.

Selig is the commissioner who brought us the Strike, the tied All Star Game and tell all Jose Canseco books. When baseball was getting mired in the cloud of doubt brought about by fixed games and gambling, they moved to bring in Landis, the first commissioner to show the ownership meant business when it came to restoring the reputation of the sport. This month they had the chance to do so again, to bring in a new commissioner who could be tough on Steroids and perhaps once again clean up baseballs tarnished image.

In an awesome article for SI.com, Steve Aschburner breaks down why people care about steroids.

He writes:

In practice, though, steroid use bothers most of us only in proportion to what the so-called cheater is getting away with. Knowingly or not, we have a hierarchy of outrage over this stuff. It is ordered according to what we perceive to be at risk. And more often than not, it’s how we feel about the stats, not the people or the product, that drives our level of outrage.

He’s really spot on here.  The truth of the matter is that we’re all hypocrites in a sense.  These guys take steroids to impress as fans, which in turn gets them paid better.  And we’re disappointed when our top gun isn’t knocking the ball out of the park as much as we’d like, so we’re just fueling them to take steroids almost, while we then criticize them when they do.

At SI.com, John Donovan gives his list of top 10 steroid free players in baseball.

Notably, he writes:

Pedro Martinez — Injuries have cost Martinez the chance at some more wins, but when he’s healthy and on — as he should be this year — Martinez is without peer. His lifetime 1.03 WHIP is the best among active players and third best of all-time. A first-ballot electee, no doubt.

As you hopefully know by now, since it was reported immediately below this post, Sid Fernandez, of the 86 Mets, has surfaced in the what will one day be known as the Great Steroids Scandal of 2007. The details are unimportant. Because lets face it, this makes no sense what so ever.

Now lets ignore things like the fact that he’d have taken steroids four years after his failed one game minor league comeback, which was in turn four years after he pitched in the MLB. Granted, nothing can be ruled out. From all accounts, Sid was never the brightest Met.  So hey, maybe he did do steroids. While retired. Because this is the same El Sid that thought if he got a house, he’d have to pay for it, in full. At once (as recorded in Jeff Pearlman’s book). We probably can’t rule out that Sid didn’t realize he was taking steroids. Maybe he thought it was candy. Injectable candy. Alright, that seems highly unlikely, but what seems less likely: Sid Fernandez taking steroids.

Sid’s decision making processes aside, theres the actual steroids. Now, I get it. Steroids don’t give you muscles. They give you the endurance to work out more, longer. There’s no way to put this nicely, so lets just recall one of Sid’s nicknames. The Hefty Lefty. Sid doesn’t look like he has worked out. Ever.  So before we jump to that conclusion that Sid was buying steroids, we need to look at a few other things.

Radomski was a clubhouse kid for the Mets. The team Sid played for. A job involving such exciting tasks as cleaning equipment and fetching things. Sid played for the Mets, liked to eat, and seemed the type that would enjoy the convenience of sending the clubhouse kids for food. He also seems like he could be forgettable enough to not pay for all those cheeseburger. So the obvious conclusion: Sid owed Radomski $3500 for Whopper runs in the 80s. Now doesn’t that make a little more sense?

Michael Schmidt in The New York Times reports that the Mitchell Report, which will be released tomorrow, will name close to 50 active and former Major League Players who were linked to steroid use.

Many of the names in the report are directly tied to information provided to Mitchell’s investigators by Kirk Radomski, a former bat boy and clubhouse attendant for the Mets.

An important fact that many news outlets seem to overlook is that Ramdomski worked for the Mets from 1985 through 1995, and admitted to having supplied performance enhancing drugs only between 1995 and 2005.