ANAHEIM – It isn ‘t going away.
Gary Sheffield wants it to go away.He wants to be able to glare at the continuing swirl of steroids, the same as he glares at opposing pitchers,and he wants to be able to believe that eventually this is going to pass him by,and it isn ‘t.It just isn ‘t. Especially now.Understand,this is only the first inning of the steroid game,the first few nuggets
that have infiltrated the surface. “Game of Shadows ” is flying off bookshelves..Jeff Pearlman ‘s biography of Barry Bonds is sure to do the same.
“Bonds on Bonds ” may not be getting “Lost “-level ratings,but people are watching,mostly because of the steroid swirl,hardly at all because of his winning personality.
George Mitchell, playing Elliott Ness, has his seamhead G-men on the case,and the very least they ‘re going to come up with is a different version of what we already know,and that ‘s going to take up the next few weeks and months,at the very least.Steroids aren ‘t going away.That means Sheffield ‘s front-row seat at this circus is going to remain occupied for a good long while. And here ‘s the thing: If there has been one backlash to the swarm of
speculation that ‘s swallowed Bonds the past few weeks,it ‘s this:People are starting to get tired of watching Bonds carry the burden of the entire steroid mess on his considerably oversized shoulders.Even those who don ‘t have a smidgen of sympathy for who Bonds is,or what he ‘s done,and what he may or may not have done with a syringe,
seem to agree on this:Singling him out is wrong. There should be others getting tossed into the muck.
So Mark McGwire ‘s name gets splattered with mud – as well it should,,because it was McGwire ‘s Bunyonesque pursuit of Roger Maris ‘ record that really launched the whole mess in the first place.
Sammy Sosa gets a little spatter,too,for his role as McGwire ‘s big-biceped foil across that summer of 1998.And,of course,there is Jose Canseco,the biggest name thus far to admit having done steroids,and Rafael Palmeiro,the biggest one to have gotten caught.
Of course,none of those guys is currently active. Gary Sheffield is.Jason Giambi is.And the two of them,along with Bonds,were the ones who helped catapult steroids off the sports page and onto the front page with their grand-jury testimony a couple of years ago.Giambi was the first to suffer the slings and arrows of public scorn,and he is thus far
the only member of the BALCO Three to apologize for the things he did – even if he never actually specified ***what ***he did.He endured a two-month penance at the start of last year before emerging with his career intact.
Sheffield was the unrepentant one.At first,he insisted this was because he had nothing for which to repent,and he stuck with that story even as his name became further ensconced in the story after “Game of Shadows ” was released..
Now,of course,it gets a little deeper for Sheffield.The other day,the authors of “Game of Shadows ” had another story,,this one about Larry M.Boyle,an Idaho judge who told Bud Selig of a chance meeting he had with Greg Anderson, Bonds ‘ personal trainer//personal pharmacist.In this meeting,Anderson described being sent by
Bonds in 2002 to “help ” his “good friend ” Sheffield,who was playing for the Braves at the time and muddling along in the middle of a poor season.
“When your best friend and best client asks you to help his friend, you do it,” Judge Boyle quoted Anderson as saying. “It appears reasonable to conclude that Mr.Bonds sent Greg Anderson to at least one of his MLB friends,Gary Sheffield, for whatever services he was rendering to professional athletes at that time,” the judge
wrote. “If Bonds sent Anderson to Sheffield,it may be important to determine whether there were others he assisted and the nature of those services.”
And so it goes.And so Sheffield ‘s name stays active in this story.And so it will remain.It isn ‘t going away.