NEWS
By From Sun news services | February 8, 2009
Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in his Most Valuable Player season of 2003 with the Texas Rangers, according to a report by Sports Illustrated. The New York Yankees star failed a drug test for two anabolic steroids, four sources told the magazine in a story posted yesterday on its Web site. His name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in a 2003 baseball survey, SI said. He reportedly tested positive for Primobolan and testosterone while playing for the Rangers.
NEWS
By Alan Zarembo | August 1, 2008
Scientists have discovered what could be the ultimate workout for couch potatoes: exercise in a pill. In experiments on mice that did no exercise, the chemical compound, known as AICAR, allowed them to run 44 percent farther on a treadmill than those that did not receive the drug. The drug, according to the researchers, changed the physical composition of muscle, essentially transforming the tissue from sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones - the same change that occurs in distance runners and cyclists through training.
NEWS
By PETER SCHMUCK | April 6, 2008
News item: The Orioles drew an announced crowd of 10,505 on Wednesday night - by far the smallest in the history of Camden Yards. My take: Club officials insist there were a lot of season-ticket exchanges for that night, but breaking the all-time low attendance record by nearly 2,700 fans in the second game of the season can't bode well for the rest of the year. If the O's end up drawing 1.7 million fans this year, we'll remember that crowd as the canary in the mineshaft. News item: The Detroit Tigers have committed $138 million in payroll to make another playoff run but are the last winless team in the major leagues.
NEWS
By Jeff Zrebiec and Dan Connolly | December 7, 2007
Major League Baseball yesterday suspended Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons and Kansas City Royals outfielder Jose Guillen 15 days each for violating the league's toughened substance-abuse prevention program, though neither failed a league-initiated drug test. Gibbons, who admitted yesterday that he had used human growth hormone, had previously avoided allegations that he received shipments of steroids and hGH from a federally raided Florida pharmacy between 2003 and 2005. "I am deeply sorry for the mistakes that I have made," Gibbons said in a statement first released to The Sun yesterday afternoon.
NEWS
By BILL ORDINE | November 6, 2007
One of the ongoing story lines of professional sports has been the use of performance-enhancing substances. Or anything stronger than a cough drop, it would seem. What's that? No cough drops, either? Huh. Anyway, a reader wrote as a result of one of our posts, perhaps it was the Barry Bonds-asterisk thing last week, that this business of competitors and drug testing can crop up in the most unlikely of places - like bridge, for instance. In fact, one bridge player was stripped of a medal five years ago for refusing to take a drug test.
NEWS
By Dan Connolly | February 12, 2007
It has been four years since Major League Baseball began administering confidential steroids tests to its players, almost two years since the sport's drug policy was taken to task by a congressional committee and about 18 months since former Oriole Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance. Some of baseball's most staggering drug-related headlines might now be in its rearview mirror, but as pitchers and catchers report this week in Arizona and Florida to begin a new season, the steroids issue will continue to percolate.
NEWS
By Dan Connolly | January 12, 2007
Throughout baseball's raging steroids controversy, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds has maintained his innocence by offering the same, continual refrain - he gets tested each season and has never failed a drug test. Now, a published report alleges that Bonds, indeed, failed one in 2006, testing positive for amphetamines in the drugs' first year on Major League Baseball's banned substances list. Citing several anonymous sources, the New York Daily News reported yesterday that Bonds, who is also under investigation for possible perjury, tested positive and, as part of his defense, initially told a union official that he had taken the substance from the locker of Giants teammate Mark Sweeney.
NEWS
By DAN RODRICKS | December 7, 2006
Today's story is about a new truck wash out near the interstate, which doesn't sound like much of a story, except that it's really about second chances and gratitude: One man, Matt Hitt, has succeeded repeatedly at business giving men who failed frequently at life, like Ralph Reed, another chance to turn things around. It's a good, we-need-that story, and the timing is great - not just because it arrives in the season of giving and light, but because the struggles of thousands of Baltimore's ex-offenders and recovering drug addicts never end; their efforts at re-entry continue to be hard, often futile, even tragic.
NEWS
By Childs Walker | October 8, 2006
The response has become almost as familiar as the drug charges that have rocked baseball in recent years. "Now that we have testing, this is a tired issue," the player du jour says. "No one in this clubhouse has failed a drug test, so why are we still talking about this?" We heard versions of this response from the Orioles when a report emerged last weekend saying that former teammate Jason Grimsley had linked Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts and Jay Gibbons to anabolic steroid use. But to the officials who have policed doping for decades in sports such as cycling and track and field, this "problem solved" thinking seems comical.
NEWS
October 3, 2006
Even the most optimistic Orioles fan would have to concede that the team ended the regular season in a truly brutal manner. Not only did the O's lose 9-0 to the Red Sox on Sunday, but they finished the season 27 games back and their 70 wins were the fewest since 2002. And then there's the IRS agent's affidavit (reported this past weekend by the Los Angeles Times) containing relief pitcher Jason Grimsley's claim that three current Orioles have used anabolic steroids. Naturally, it had to be three of the team's top players: Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts and Jay Gibbons.