Steroids

News item: The new book about to hit the shelves by Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts portrays Alex Rodriguez as a guy who took steroids in high school and tipped pitches to opposing hitters in the hope they would reciprocate and help him pad his stats. My take: After all those steroids, you would think the guy wouldn't need any more padding. News item: Former Oriole Kevin Millar, sporting the goatee he was not allowed to grow in Baltimore, drove in three runs in the Toronto Blue Jays' 8-4 victory over the Orioles on Friday night at Rogers Centre.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting, which means it's time once again to ask how much longer fans plan to put up with what baseball is doing with performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe this is the year, and this is the moment, they stop, with Alex Rodriguez's failed drug test stinking up spring training. But if last year wasn't it - after the Mitchell Report, after the Roger Clemens circus, after Barry Bonds' numbers still taunted everybody even as he was being blackballed from the game - then it will never happen.

Here's Jim Palmer, in Baltimore for an eye exam, then stopping by the radio station before heading back to Florida, where spring training is about to begin. The Orioles' legend turned 63 last fall, and he's a grandfather now. He's still tall, lean, tanned and handsome, keeping himself in good shape long after the end of a Hall of Fame career in which he established himself as one of baseball's greatest pitchers - without the help of anabolic steroids. "Anti-inflammatories," Mr. Palmer says when, during an hourlong conversation on WYPR, I ask him to list substances that players of the pre-steroidal era used to keep themselves going.

A package of human growth hormone was delivered to Larry Bigbie's home in Northwest Indiana at Christmastime 2005. Within 10 minutes, federal investigators were at the former Orioles outfielder's door. Bigbie knew he was busted. He said he had no choice but to answer questions from the investigators, including Jeff Novitzky, the Internal Revenue Service special agent who made headlines in the Barry Bonds-Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal. Then, for two years after that interrogation, Bigbie waited, mostly in silence, for his testimony to become public.

WASHINGTON -Former Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada issued a tearful apology at a news conference in Houston yesterday, hours after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of misleading Congress regarding his knowledge of steroid use in major league baseball. "I made a mistake, and now I know how serious a mistake I made," Tejada said, according to the Houston Chronicle. "I take responsibility, and I'm very sorry for what happened." Tejada took no questions during the news conference at Minute Maid Park.

Former Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada is expected to plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington this morning to a charge that he lied to congressional investigators about illegal performance-enhancing drugs - telling them he knew nothing though he had discussed steroids with an Oakland Athletics teammate and paid him for human growth hormone. According to a criminal information document filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia yesterday, Tejada provided "misrepresentations" to staffers from the congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Aug. 26, 2005.

He did not do it just once. Alex Rodriguez admitted yesterday that he used performance-enhancing substances for the three years before baseball initiated steroid tests in which violators would be identified and suspended. "I was stupid for three years," Rodriguez told ESPN. Two days after Sports Illustrated revealed Rodriguez had tested positive for steroids in 2003, Rodriguez said he took performance-enhancing drugs upon joining the Texas Rangers in 2001, citing the "enormous amount of pressure" that accompanied his then-record $252 million contract with the club.

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.

A Baltimore County man who has been implicated by the Web site The Smoking Gun as a key informant in baseball's steroid scandal has denied any association with the federal government's investigation into illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In an exclusive interview with The Baltimore Sun yesterday, Andrew Michael "Mike" Bogdan admitted to helping the FBI in a real-estate fraud case as part of a plea agreement. But he said he did not use his close friendship with former Orioles outfielder Larry Bigbie to assist the FBI in nabbing one of baseball's primary steroid distributors.

Court documents show Barry Bonds tested positive for three types of steroids, and his personal trainer once told his business manager in the San Francisco Giants' clubhouse how he injected the slugger with performance-enhancing drugs "all over the place." Prosecutors plan to use those 2000-2003 test results and other evidence, detailed in documents released yesterday, at Bonds' trial next month to show he lied when he told a federal grand jury in December 2003 that he never knowingly used steroids.