There is nothing heroic about a professional athlete admitting that he or she cheated after testing positive for using a banned substance. In the most recent instance, though, Maria Sharapova’s admission makes Jenrry Mejia’s foolish claim look even more absurd.
Mejia, former New York Mets closer, recently incurred a lifetime ban for a third positive drug test and has had the temerity to accuse Major League Baseball of orchestrating his suspension and the Players Association of failing to fight for him properly.
Mejia and his lawyer, Vincent White, held a news conference Friday at White’s office in Queens, the same New York borough that is home to the Mets.
Mejia, a 26-year-old Dominican, told reporters, “I want to clear my name,” adding he was “not here to accuse anyone or hurt anyone.”
However, his lawyer, doing what Mejia is paying him to do, raised issues that were accusatory. Vincent White, meet Joseph Tacopina.
Tacopina was one of the lawyers Alex Rodriguez hired in 2013 to fight his 211-game drug suspension. From what I saw and heard, A-Rod hired Tacopina not for his legal expertise but for the amount of noise he could make. I don’t know what Tacopina did in 2014, but Rodriguez didn’t play baseball.
I would boldly assert that Mejia won’t play baseball this year and next except for two words – Steve Howe.
Commissioner Fay Vincent banned the relief pitcher for life after he incurred his seventh drug suspension, but his agent, Richard Moss, pulled an arbitration rabbit out of his hip pocket and Howe’s lifetime suspension was overturned. MLB, arbitrator George Nicolau ruled, had never treated Howe, through his string of suspensions, for adult attention deficit disorder.
I spoke with Moss Saturday and he said he was not available to handle a grievance so Mejia is stuck with White if he wants to challenge his suspension through the grievance procedure.
I did not attend the Mejia news conference because I learned of it after the fact. I asked his office for a transcript of the conference but heard nothing back. I left a voice mail message for White, but he did not return the call.
News reports of the conference said White spoke vaguely about corrupt ways in which MLB investigated Mejia but said he offered no specifics.
No one is more skeptical than I of what MLB says and does, but I am even more skeptical of lawyers who make the kind of unsubstantiated claims that White and Tacopina make.
Maybe I’m spoiled by having dealt for years with Moss, who never lied and never concocted claims of wrongdoing by baseball officials. If Moss said officials did something wrong, it was pretty certain they had done something wrong.
In his news conference comments, White said, “Mr. Mejia was told by league representatives that if he did not provide testimony on a particular player they wanted to investigate they would go out of their way to find him positive a third time. My client believes he has no choice now but to fight.”
Mejia should fight because his baseball career is spiraling down the drain. He can blame MLB for framing him into a third positive test, but he can blame only himself for being in the position where a third positive could be fatal.
And how does he implicate the union in his troubles? A positive test is a positive test. The union has no reason to join MLB in sacrificing one of its members. There’s nothing in it for the union to pursue that path.
As for the lawyer’s charge of questionable investigations, no investigation is needed to prove a positive test. If a test is positive, it’s positive. The union is not going to participate in a crooked test. Again, what would be in it for the union to implicate its own member?
Neither White nor Mejia addressed that point; they simply stuck to their accusations. Mejia talked about a conspiracy, and White, according to the Daily News, “referred in vague terms to various ways he believed MLB’s inquiry into Mejia was corrupt.” White also accused MLB of “dirty cop tactics,” whatever they are.
Union officials had no comment on the charges raised by Mejia and White, but the commissioner’s office issued a statement:
“Sadly, the comments made by Mr. Mejia and his representatives today continue a pattern of athletes hiring aggressive lawyers and making wild, unsupported allegations about the conduct of others in an effort to clear their names. Mr. Mejia’s record demonstrates that he was a repeated user of banned performance-enhancing substances. As such, per our collectively bargained rules, he has no place as an active player in the game today.”
Mejia can apply for reinstatement after one year and be reinstated after a two-year absence. If he is reinstated, he can resume playing at age 28, leaving plenty of time to resume and extend his career.
He will also have plenty of time to get banned substances and foolish excuses out of his system.
There could be an ironic twist to Mejia’s effort for reinstatement. While Mejia faces an almost impossible task, tennis’ Sharapova could be reinstated because of the way tennis introduced the ban on the substance she used.
PROMISING PITCHER IN NEED OF HEALTHY ELBOW
Some mornings it probably isn’t worth getting out of bed if your name is Jarrod Parker.
Since Arizona made Parker the ninth player selected in the June 2007 draft, the right-handed pitcher has suffered an incredible series of disabling elbow injuries. Twice, in 2009 and 2014, he had elbow reconstruction surgery, the one popularly known as Tommy John surgery, in which a tendon replaces an elbow ligament.
The injuries and resulting operations prevented him from pitching in 2010 in the Arizona organization and in 2014 with the Oakland Athletics, who acquired him in a five-player trade in December 2011.
In between surgical seasons, in 2012 and ’13, Parker had records of 13-8 and 12-8, showing enough promise for the A’s to believe they had a future star in their rotation.
Calamity, however, struck again. As Parker was rehabilitating from his second reconstruction surgery last year, he fractured the medial epicondyle in his right elbow May 8 and had surgery 11 days later.
He again was rehabilitating the elbow in the early weeks of spring training when he refractured the medial epicondyle in his right elbow. The team said the fracture was discovered Friday in an MRI Friday, which he had after he had elbow pain and had to cut short a simulated game he was throwing.
A next step was not immediately decided, but Parker will certainly miss yet another season and his future has to be in some question.
GOOSE ON NERDS RECALLS ‘FAT MAN’
Nearly three and a half decades have passed since the incident so I excuse myself for not remembering the precise question I asked him that set off Rich (Goose) Gossage’s tirade, one of the all-time great clubhouse tirades.
Gossage didn’t rant on as long as some managers, Tommy Lasorda and Lee Elia among them, but it was his pointed reference to George Steinbrenner and how he referred to him that made his outburst memorable.
Gossage’s 1982 outburst came prominently to mind last week when the Hall of Fame relief pitcher showed he still had it at the age of 64. Gossage harshly and vulgarly criticized Toronto’s home run hitter, Jose Bautista, telling ESPN.com he is “a disgrace to the game” for his exaggerated bat flips and the “nerds” who are ruining baseball by the way they run it.
In 1982 the Yankees and Gossage were struggling and the owner was letting them know publicly how he felt about it. Even though the Yankees won a doubleheader from Kansas City and Gossage registered saves in both games, retiring all seven batters he faced, he erupted after the second game.
Goose was obviously prepared to say something about Steinbrenner’s criticism because, as I said, my question, whatever it was, did not invite his outburst. He was just waiting for a chance to rant.
”I want out,” he roared, using his best booming voice. ”I’m sick of everything that goes on around here.”
Then he took off on the press, the fans and Steinbrenner, though not by name. ”All you guys with pens and tape recorders,” he screamed, standing in the middle of the clubhouse, ”you can turn them on and take it upstairs to the fat man because I’m sick of this stuff, this negative stuff.”
Steinbrenner did not reprimand Gossage for his comments.
“’The only part I resent,” the owner said the next day, “is when he said you can tell it to the fat man. I don’t think he meant me. … I’ve lost 11 pounds. If I were 31, and I couldn’t run any faster than him, I wouldn’t call anyone else fat.
”But get me right, I’m not mad at him. He’s entitled to make a couple of statements.”
The Yankees’ reaction to Gossage’s 2016 comments was far different. Gossage was a guest instructor at the Yankees’ spring camp, and General Manager Brian Cashman summoned him to a meeting the next day.
Afterward Gossage took nothing back of what he had told ESPN.com, and Cashman issued no statement or reprimand.
As much as I enjoyed the “fat man” reference all those many years ago, I liked Gossage’s comments about the nerds running baseball.
In a follow-up to his original piece, Andrew Marchand wrote of Gossage’s comment:
“He lamented the ‘nerds,’ who are in front offices, who he thinks are changing the way the game is played.
“‘It is a joke,’ Gossage said. ‘The game is becoming a freaking joke because of the nerds who are running it.
“‘I’ll tell you what has happened, these guys played rotisserie baseball at Harvard or wherever … they went, and they thought they figured the … game out. They don’t know …’”
He added: “‘A bunch of…nerds running the game. You can’t slide into second base. You can’t take out the…catcher because (Buster Posey) was in the wrong position and they are going to change all the rules. You can’t pitch inside anymore. I’d like to knock some of these…on their ass and see how they would do against pitchers in the old days.’”
As “an old-school guy” as Gossage said he is, I endorse his comments.