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I would not say that if I didn't know them. These are former students. Not just people i met. I. do know people from the Russian and Chinese Olympic teams. I believe what they've told me and not surprised of the bans they've received. You can make all the guesses and suppositions you want. You are going to be wrong in most cases.

It's insane to me how strongly people believe in speculation that results from personal bias/prejudice. The lack of need for anything resembling objective evidence in our culture is just depressing.

I won't share the full list, but Robert (1), Kopech (11), Madrigal (14), Vaughn (35) made the list.

Let's all reminisce about this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/astros/2018/04/21/justin-verlander-tim-anderson-unwritten-rules/539194002/ Where Justin Verlander - knowingly cheating and breaking actual rules - decided to play the "unwritten rules" fun police against Tim Anderson. It's amazing; McCann and Verlander care so much about the unwritten rules, but don't give a fuck about the actual rules.

He's generally a moron

Its human growth hormone not testosterone. Two very different hormones.

This was over 30 years ago. Statute of limitations is up. C'mon Black Jack. Seems a guy is trying to make himself relevant again, and I am no fan of LaRussa. But this is ridiculous.

Spare me the excuses. These guys are complete trash; years of calling out other teams with shit like this: All while cheating their way to a title. Their lies, their hypocrisy, and their soap boxes... all complete trash. I have said that everyone tries to gain edges, and some go too far, but the sanctimonious way in which the Astros presented themselves and attacked others is so comical now that this has all come out. What a disgrace. Not a peep out of anyone either; except for fake denials or nonsensical "it really didn't help" BS. At least Beltran owned his mistake and made zero excuses; he also never accused others of doing what he was doing. Verlander is a clown.

FIFY: Robert CF, Moncada 3B, Betts RF, Eloy LF, Grandal C, Abreu DH, Vaughn 1B, Anderson SS, Madrigal 2B

McDowell joined the team in 1987, the year after LaRussa was fired. Sooo. no.

Well he never actually played for LaRussa so

Soxtalk can really suck. You get a little excited about something you read...you post it and then the howling negatives come out of the woodwork to tell you how wrong and stupid you are. Ok Vaughn isnt Bellinger...hes Frank Thomas 2.0. Better? .300 hitter with 30+ homers and 100 walks hitting in a lineup with 4 other superstars. Im gonna go dream somewhere else.

Especially as to how it translates across nearly all factors in life - many much more important than baseball. It really is depressing.

Yeah, agreed. If he has an exemption, it's for health reasons and he has abnormally low levels. This just allows him to use it to get his levels up to the same point that other healthy players have.

I will say, I have no idea what camera's were good enough in the 1980's to zoom in from the outfield stands into the fingers of a catcher... But I don't know why Jack would make this up; well, he does hate LaRussa but still. Odds are this is true, and makes me even happier that we fired this ass hat.

Covey and Lopez do

there should be a rule that if you land at #7 four years in a row your front office has to be fired.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/briangoff/2019/12/16/long-term-viewership-trends-show-warnings-for-nfl-nba-and-other-major-sports/#1fe4cbd0584f Thought this was an interesting article...a lot of stories coming out in the last few days (after Astros/Cora-Gate) have been speaking about the threat to the sport, about baseball increasingly becoming a regional and not national one (in this area, the NFL and NBA have the advantage), about how the NFL and college football product (NCAA basketball is terribly watered down this year) dominate the landscape. Some of it's clearly about marketing, the pace of the game, the average age of 57 for a fan that ranks baseball as his favorite sport, etc. Of course, on the other hand, baseball still ranks ahead of the NBA in terms of revenue and is about even in terms of franchise values. That's still a monumental change from the 1970's and 80's, before the age of Bird/Magic/Jordan. The NBA has the China market and much of the globe....MLB dominates in Latin America/Mexico and the Pacific Rim (Japan/S.Korea/Taiwan). India is a world all of its own. In terms of football, parents are increasingly becoming concerned about football injuries, which we've been talking for at least the last 5-10 years about CTE and concussions...so it's hard to imagine the NFL ever getting MORE popular from here on out, especially with the end of the Brady/Belichick Era. What happens in the NBA once LeBron retires and the Golden State Warriors dynasty is dissolved? Well, it's already resulting in NBA viewership being down (along with Zion Williamson being out.) The article also talks about NASCAR's ebbs and flows, you can certainly say the same for golf for much of the last decade with Tiger Woods out of contention for the majority of that time. Baseball, despite national/local media talking about its demise, is still thriving...all things considered. It just won't be the 1950's and 60's version where kids all skipped school to watch games during the daytime, listened to the radio wherever they were or found the nearest black & white television in a department store window to watch. It's also pretty clear the Cubs and White Sox were at least five years too late to really take advantage of the most profitable broadcast rights deals...although sports will always be viable when compared to the rising production costs and billions invested by Netflix, Apple, Disney, Hulu, HBO, CBS All Access and Peacock for movies and series development. Lots of different ways to take the conversation. Just thought it was an interesting topic, and it certainly will be back in the news with Marquee Network having to announce their fee structure in February and comparing Cubs/White Sox ratings and broadcast production values.

HGH isn't enough to make Mike Trout. It's an age of conspiracies in baseball. I say pay no mind to this.

I don't think Trout needs,any help.

People will believe anything

That's good. Unfortunately, people in MLB, NFL, or Olympic sports cant do that if they want to keep competing.

This may be the best single argument as to why we don't vacate championships. The fact is, one team got caught cheating, but it's fairly clear a number of teams are cheating in kind.

Here's another fun one: During Lance Armstrong's reign of TDF championships, 87% of the top 10 Tour De France finishers all tested positive at some point. That's 61 out of 70.

No I don't. For example, there's only 2 members of the Sox I would bet the beach house on, but common sense tells us more of them are taking PED's. PED use is rampant throughout sports, but I certainly don't think everyone is using.

You might also meet some medical staff from the Russian Olympic team that will tell you they're legit. That doesn't mean they're being honest. This reminds me of when MMA fans thought Vitor Belfort and Jon Jones were legit. If there's one thing the last 30ish years of sports has taught us is that extreme statistical outliers are almost always doping. If it seems to good to be true...

I do. I know people on her personal medical staff.

Hold on, you think Serena Williams is legit? Okay, that's just batshit crazy.

Thanks doc. So Rocco baldelli had genetics to be an elite athlete but had no strength by 28. Guess his elite athlete Gene's should have overcome any issues.

That catch was unbelievable...but I also thought holy crap don't get hurt!!

I don't quite get why mlb is so high on vaughn. Vaughn is a good prospect but his mlb.com ranking must be mostly on his prospect pedigree. His first pro year was good but with an 832 ops not outstanding. That is ok for his first year but when I rank a right handed college 1b top20 ish overall I want to either see him absolutely destroy lower minors (1000+ ops) or ideally perform at upper majors. If he rakes in AA next year I can justify a top20 ranking but for a lower minor only college guy imo the rank is a bit aggresive. This is nothing against him as a prospect, he has the potential to be a plus first baseman in the majors, just saying I have not seen enough to rank him top30 yet.

Both of these are true. Had there been a rule on the books, agreed to by the players union, that allowed management to suspend the players for this type of cheating, MLB would likely not have offered immunity, at least not to more than a handful of them. Had that rule existed, that whole roster (Keuchel included) would probably be facing some sort of suspension for violating it. But since no rule existed, it was not worth creating a new fight with the players union that would have lasted years and prolonged the investigation indefinitely, so the sensible move was to offer clear immunity to the players to get a full statement from them on this part of the incident.

This still does not explain why they were granted immunity. This is just why they would have a tough time punishing them. I'm sticking with the published reports that they were granted immunity to tell what happened and who knew what as opposed to your version.

How can you ask how he is salty? He was not part of the organization during the time in which he is speaking so he has second hand knowledge and is speaking as if he was part of the process. It would be somewhat credible if he was int eh organization when this happened or explained how it was handed down from LaRussa to the organization and carried forward to his time. He is failing to tell this part of the story which is pretty important.

Jim has probably seen like 10 ab's combined from everyone on his list. lol And when I saw that he had quotes about each player from GM's and player personnel I thought he was going to have quotes from like scouts and stuff that weren't with the organization that the guy plays for; even if anonymous. Rick Hahn thinks highly of Luis Robert? NO WAY, JIM!

I don't think stealing signs is all that bad. I played in college and if the signs were so obvious that I can use them, fine. I think stealing signs is almost expected, which is why pitchers and catchers have different series of signs when a baserunner is at 2nd.

Was Hawk Harrelson actually correct in firing Tony LaRussa? MY COLUMN:

Can't do opening day but picked up tickets for Wed April 8th vs Mariners and Wed May 20th vs the Rox.

See all those banking, real estate and mortgage loan originators who are sitting in jail now after the 2008-09 financial crisis. The more white collar or celebrity you are, the lower the probability that anything of consequence actually happens to you. The two counter-examples that come to mind are "insider trading" (Martha Stewart, Phil Mickelson) and then the more recent university admissions scandal.

Does what they did, getting signs, make them truly better? If the tigers got every pitch tipped next season they would still be one of the worst teams in the league. Maybe it helped maybe it didn't. Farquhar realized it and changed it up. We need to stop acting like thhis is some huge deal because it's baseball or football or whatever. This gets more people talking about action than something that could actually effect your life. It's a game.

Maybe you are right, but I looked at the hire as extremely important. The Guillen era was done. Whatever was left from the 2005 team was aging, and the franchise couldn't rest on past laurels anymore. The Ventura hire was interesting - for one day. Otherwise it made little sense. Everyone took it on the chin in 2013. After the Sox got slaughtered by the Cubs, things only worsened. Board members were quoted in the Tribune as saying they just left everything to Jerry. And since Jerry wasn't talking publicly, the appearance was that no one cared the team was on its way to its worst season in 43 years, coming one loss short of 100. So far it is the beginning of a losing streak that has lasted seven seasons. I remember one pop up in between the mound and the plate and three Sox infielders converged only to let it fall in the grass about 10 feet in front of home. Ah, the memories. I'm like most White Sox fans. I prefer to remember Ventura the third baseman, not Ventura the manager.

Sigh.....

According to Scott Brosius's kid on instagram. Can we relax with running away with this stuff?

Aren't we all murderers, when you think about it?

IMO - he drilled that team exceptionally hard on fundamentals and it showed as they were extremely fundamentally sound (Making correct throws, hitting cutoff man, rundowns, etc.) all year, with the exception of guys who weren't in their own training camp. But, the team clearly wore down in September and hit a losing skid - this was almost entirely because their young pitchers had thrown so many more innings than the previous year, but Ventura interprets it as a reason to take it easy on the team in the spring of the next season so that they're fresher in September. The same players who had drilled so hard pre-2012 reached the 2013 season so out of practice that every ball on the ground turned into a clown show. By 2014, Ventura has a new extension and "Don't work them too hard" has become a motto for the entire coaching staff, up and down through the minors, and it was convenient because it meant the coaches didn't have to work that hard either. So when Abreu and Garcia clearly needed help in technique to keep themselves from getting hurt, or Marcus Semien needed to be drilled on basic footwork of a shortstop, the coaching staff did nothing but expect them to figure it out on their own.

I don't really have anything against Robin Ventura then or now. But I will never understand why took a job he didn't want, or why it was offered to him in the first place. I only hope future managerial hires don't go this way.

It's mind boggling how much a guy who is going back to get his degree, and volunteers as an unpaid assistant at the school where he became famous, bothers some people. Your lives can't be that pathetic.

I think they are investing everything on the QB position and its importance. I don't think you bring in coaches so you can land a vet sto-gap like Foles. They are going to add a vet to drive competition and give them a ripcord to pull if things are looking bad 6 weeks in (and in some ways its going to make things even harder for Mitch...because I think he is a guy who lost his swagger this past season with everyone second guessing everything and having someone like Foles/Dalton or whomever beyond him is only going to intensify that). The best case for Bears is Mitch breaks out and basically just doubles down this offseason and takes an F-IT mentality to the field where he just flat out BALLS. Have fun and ball out. Oversimplifying things, but the dude just thinks too much on the field and that breaks down his ability to read and react. And I think a lot of it comes down to that back of the mind, you over magnify on the what can go wrong. vs what could go right). Dude needs a mental coach to help him with visualization, etc. Shoot, I'm not even close to a professional athlete but I deal with that when I play basketball...when I have a swagger that my buckets are going in, they do and I just play quicker and react faster and make moves. When I'm more worried and focused on NOT turning the ball over or making sure I hit the bucket, every part of me moves and reacts just a bit slower and that difference is the difference between me making baskets and getting layups vs. not. Super basic level cause I'm not a professional athlete, but I really think Mitch's issues lay between the ears and not from the smart vs. not smart, but from mental blocks / lack of confidence/swagger. Maybe he can go all Greinke (remember when he finally got past his mental issues and broke through). Dude was ready to retire and play golf cause he was such a mental headcase. Konerko was kind of the same way...he had his best years once he freed up mentally and got over "fear of failing".