When Ken Griffey Sr. played for the New York Yankees, Ken Griffey Jr. was a clubhouse presence at Yankee Stadium, though not every day. In fact, he once got in trouble with Manager Billy Martin. Nick Priore, the Yankees’ clubhouse boss, went to Griffey Sr. one day in 1983 and told him Martin had complained that his sons, Ken Jr., 13, and Craig, 12, were making too much noise in the hall outside the clubhouse.

Ken Jr. never forgot that incident and said he would never sign with the Yankees because of it. And he never did.

I remember, too, Roberto Alomar and Sandy Alomar Jr. tossing baseballs against a wall outside …

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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 …

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I don’t know Rob Manfred well enough to know if he has a good sense of humor, but he sure got a good chuckle out of me the other day when he talked about his minority hiring program. He was as funny as his predecessor, Bud Selig, ever was in talking about the issue.

To his credit, Manfred told the gathering at Major League Baseball’s fourth annual diversity business summit that MLB’s “focus on diversity was a little too narrow.”

But if MLB.com’s coverage of Manfred’s appearance at the session reflected Manfred’s focus, the commissioner is straying far from focusing on legitimate minority hiring.

Again to Manfred’s credit, he has …

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