FEDS SEIZE Baseball Drug Test Results

SI.com (Sports Illustrated) ^ | April 9. 2004 | Associated Press

[Lancey Howard]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Federal authorities probing an alleged steroid distribution ring have seized the results and samples of drug tests on selected major league baseball players from a drug-testing lab, a spokesman for the lab said Friday.

Internal Revenue Service agents served a search warrant to obtain "documentation and specimens" from a Quest Diagnostics lab in Las Vegas, Quest spokesman Gary Samuels said.

[Lancey Howard]

The IRS don't need no stinking Patriot Act.

About ten years ago I saw on my television IRS agents testifying at Congressional hearings with hoods over their heads and voice distorters so that they could hide their identities from the Internal Revenue Service, and I knew then that the grand experiment called the United States of America was over, a failure.

I am still hoping against hope that the Democrats and the liberals can be destroyed and America saved. I guess I'm just a hopeless optimist.

[Michael_S]

Major League Baseball Players Association tried to block the subpoena? Bad move.

The player's union is way out of their league here. No pun intended.

[El Gato]

IRS? Are they alleging tax fraud? Hmm.

[Lancey Howard]

If Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron didn't use it, then yes. Asterisk McGwire, too. He's another one who, like Bonds, was a tall skinny rookie and by the end of his career was a hulking behemoth. It's just not right. I have been coaching kids' baseball teams for ten years and I don't like to think these kids feel they have to take steroids in order to have a shot at stardom or a scholarship.

Yeah, baseball should "asterisk" 1990 to 2004.
(Won't happen, of course.)

[cynicom]

You mean those muscles of Bonds, Scheffield, Giambi and the rest are not ones they grew after their growing years were over???? Who would have ever known.....

[threat matrix]

How about Sammy Sosa and his corked bat?

[itsahoot]

How about Sammy Sosa and his corked bat?</>

And all Poor Mickey mantle had was Jim Beam and Pabst Blue Ribbon :)

[TLI]

The tests were supposed to remain anonymous.

I suspected as much

But a federal grand jury in San Francisco that issued indictments in February against four men for allegedly distributing steroids to professional athletes sought the test results as part of its probe.

This does not authorise an ex-post-facto warrant. There is no consent to search either. The testing was conducted under one set of rules which were agreed upon by both parties. One party violates the agreement, it is dissolved.

I see two possabilites.

1. All baseball players, employees, managers, owners, hotdog venders, etc. boycott drug testing beginning today. If testing is forced, strike.

2. If the fed.gov jumps up and indicates "we are the almighty fed, thou shalt do my bidding" all associated with baseball maks public exactly what the IRS (!?!) did. If the fed pushes the issue that is evidence of tyranny.

How does it go?

JUST SAY NO.

[mabelkitty]

IRS?
WTF?

[Dane]

And all Poor Mickey mantle had was Jim Beam and Pabst Blue Ribbon :)

And Mickey mainlined Jim Beam and Pabst for months to up his home runs numbers.

I guess it never occured to you if that Mickey laid of the Beam and Pabst he could have been even greater in the baseball realm.

You knee jerk Libertarian drug lovers are a hoot, IMO, with your simplistic arguements.

[mabelkitty]

Albert Bell, Both Alomars, Mark McGwuire, and just about every player with a nasty attitude that vaguely resembles PMS without sugar and caffeine fixes. Milton Bradley?

[Hank Rearden]

By the way - - The IRS???

That's the only thing in the whole article that slightly interested me. Those worthless parasites are worming into everything.

[Dane]

BTW, itsahoot, I am actually on the side of the asterik side of the ocean.

Let's see if Bonds and Co. in the baseball steroid communtiy, can actually admit that they used steroids.

They can't, their hubris will get in the way of actually admitting the truth, that they used drugs to break the previous records.

[sharktrager]

Most of those guys had attitudes when they were rookies, and nobody is saying Bonds and McGwire used steroids as rookies.

Actually, Roid Rage is largely a myth. It tends to be the result of someone with an inferiority complex who now has the ability to strike back. It is interesting to note that, while bodybuilding is fraught with steroid use, there are few cases of Roid Rage.

[MindBender26]

This is a POS. As much as I oppose drug abuse, this is another search for something to prosecute matter, just like in Florida v. Limbaugh.

Also, MLB sought to quash search, so gmvt acted before judge could. Stupid. Great way to PO the judge. Then judge excludes and Gmvt care is SOL!

[sharktrager]

Won't happen.

Baseball did not have a ban on steroids. They were being used illegally, but not by baseball's rules. To give Barry an asterisk you'd have to go back and do the same for those who drank during prohibition and used cocaine.

If steroids were used by a record setter it was illegal and immoral, but it did not violate baseball's rules.

[agitator]

Very little of what the IRS does is lawful. However, judges pay taxes so they live in fear like everybody else. Lying, stealing, extortion, intimidation, trespassing, property damage, etc. are their stock-in-trade. If you hire a lawyer to fight them, your lawyer is just an enemy spy because he needs to stay on their good side too. If you become enough of an irritant to them they will bust into your house with a platoon of flak-jacketed, jackbooted thugs who will point submachine guns at your wife and children. If you resist, they will be more than happy to Waco you, your family, and your house since you are obviously a "dirtbag" and you'll only be getting what "dirtbags" deserve.

[Dane]

It tends to be the result of someone with an inferiority complex who now has the ability to strike back

Huh, in actuality, IMO, it's kinda of the way Bonds and Co. felt the inferiority complex when seeing the records of people before them in Baseball history.

Now we could go on about the Libertrarian aspects of the arguement, but the specter of this issue transcends that, especially to the memories of people like Roger Maris and Hank Aaron. This is not a black and white, cut and dry issue where the pat Libertarian answer will suffice, IMO.

[weef]

Agree on Bagwell - he looks thinner this year but blamed it on not being able to exercise as much in the off season (due to shoulder problem). On the other hand, he is smacking the ball around this year already...

[bvw]

It is a horrid action, in many, many ways. Like most of the un-Constitutional Federal "war on drugs" it is invasive. Interesting that it falls so soon after Allen J. Favish's request for the Foster "suicide" phots was rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court on PRIVACY grounds. Would they be even 1/10th so zealous of the privacy of the general public with regard to all the blatant PRIVACY intrusions of the "war on drugs"!

Another great invader of the sacred PRIVATE realm is the income tax, and it certainly is at least curious and reasonably alarming and scary that the IRS can now somehow reach out and grab our medical records for action against some third party.

A number of my own blood and urine tests were had at a QUEST clinic. This invasion -- this intrusion -- makes me reluctant to go back to them -- but then where can I go?

And there's the great horror -- like me, there are goinng to be people people who will avoid medical tests they should otherwise be wise to get, for the sake of PRIVACY.

So the Federales have just injured a GREAT number of Americans by raising that now totally justified fear.