Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

pan6467 · 02-19-2008, 12:35 AM

This reminds me of when I was 15 and my dad caught me drinking alcohol. I told my dad that I wasn't as bad as Mike down the road and 2 houses over. HE was smoking pot..... and I could be like him, so please dad don't punish me that bad.

Not only did I still got punished, I lost a great friend because I refused to just take responsibility for my actions. I thought some how that my turning in a friend (who I doubt has ever smoked pot and sure as Hell didn't then) and trying to deflect my own guilt, I would get off scott free.

What do the Yankees (and probably MLB as a whole would say this) think we are stupid? The NFL has a worse problem, so it's ok MLB has a bunch of steroidal and HGH cheats and no one will ever know what records or who did what honestly. Nope, the Yankees (and probably MLB as a whole) has to take down the NFL also and act like I tried to take down a friend as a teen. Wow.

That like this whole episode is sad, disgusting and truly pathetic.

Quote:

Hank Steinbrenner: Baseball unfairly singled out for performance-enhancing drugs
February 18, 2008

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Hank Steinbrenner insists baseball is being picked on for its trouble with performance-enhancing drugs, and claims the problem is bigger in football.

"I don't like baseball being singled out," the New York Yankees senior vice president said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Monday night.

"Everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don't tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players."

Answered NFL spokesman Greg Aiello: "We've had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year."

Steinbrenner's comments came after Andy Pettitte met with reporters for the first time since the Yankees pitcher was named in the Mitchell Report. Two days after the report was released in December, Pettitte confirmed he used human growth hormone in 2002; two weeks ago, he told congressional investigators he also used HGH for one day in 2004.

"A lot of baseball people thought that baseball would be the last sport that it would be a problem in and probably just ignored it too long," Steinbrenner said. "But the fact is it's been in football a long time and it's been in basketball, I'm sure. Why baseball is being singled out, I don't know. I don't know. I know all the excuses -- `Well, it's America's game and it's the statistics.'

"That's not an excuse. If a sport is riddled with it, it's riddled with it. Why aren't they looking at the NFL?" he said.

Steinbrenner said baseball will "clean up the game."

"We're going to do it," he said.

Of course this comes the day the man they signed to a 16 million dollar contract admits to taking HGH but "not to cheat.... to help me come back from injuries faster".... IT WAS AND IS A FUCKING, ILLEGAL DRUG, YOU ASSWIPE. Besides don't you think taking it to "speed up your recovery time" is cheating to begin with? Old time players and legit players didn't do it, so why did you, ultimately to cheat.

How nice you signed the contract the day after you found out YOUR NAME had been put out. How nice you had a couple days notice to sign the contract and play dumb.

Wonder if you told King George and the princes, or if you waited until after the list came out.

How nice knowing your name is already ON the contract and because of the players union and the CBA even if the Yankees cut you or told you to quit, the contract is guaranteed. You think us fans don't know that MLB is the only professional sport where if the team cuts you for any reason you still get the money. And you have 16 MILLION reasons not to "retire".

ANDY PETTITTE YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT..... I HOPE NOT ONLY DO YOU NOT GET INTO THE HALL OF FAME BUT THAT IN YOUR FIRST GAME THIS YEAR YOU FUCKING BLOW OUT YOUR ARM. YOU SCUM SUCKING CHEATER.....

OOOO yeah, that's right you're a Christian also..... WWJD????? He wouldn't have fucking cheated ASSWIPE, and he sure wouldn't have signed that contract the day after finding out... "ooo my name is on the list."

I can maybe live with knowing you cheated, but the contract tactic was brilliant, sheer brilliance. Knowing you have $16 MILLION in the bank sure does help one sleep better doesn't it? Who needs a conscience when with 16 MILLION you can pay the best doctor in the world for sleeping aids to help you sleep.

Quote:

Contrite Pettitte leans on Yankees support
By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
February 18, 2008

Jeff Passan
Yahoo! Sports
TAMPA, Fla. – Were the New York Yankees inclined to lavish their new billion-dollar stadium with their version of a modern-day Mount Rushmore, the four men stationed Monday under a tent – and under the gloaming that accompanies performance-enhancing drugs – may well have composed it.

To the side sat Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter, paragons, stalwarts, pinstripe lifers and, on this afternoon, intended distractions. Not that their unified presence could divert every camera trained on the front of the room where Andy Pettitte occupied the center seat.

In fact, Rivera, Posada and Jeter's appearance, a clever little ploy meant to show support for their embattled teammate, illuminated the Yankees' desperation to make the worn-off luster on their great dynasty of 10 years ago look instead like a well-hewn patina. As Pettitte spent 59 minutes admitting his guilt over using human growth hormone, talking about its repercussions, saying that he considered retirement and hoping the truth absolves him of further scrutiny – ha! – Rivera, Posada and Jeter sat in a row, and you well expected one to cover his eyes, another his ears and the third his mouth.

Rather, they were stone-faced, as though they'd been hit with buckshot of truth that, goodness, their championship teams really had been an epicenter of performance-enhancing drug use. More than 20 percent of the names that appeared in the Mitchell Report had played on the Yankees during the Joe Torre era. Pettitte and Roger Clemens and Chuck Knoblauch and Jason Giambi and Kevin Brown and Gary Sheffield and Jason Grimsley and on and on, all the way to Dan Naulty.

The Yankees were dirty. Among the dirtiest.

And not even the best Kirby vacuum, let alone a news conference, could clean that mess.

"Do I think I'm a cheater? I don't," Pettitte said. "Was it stupid? Yeah, it was stupid. Was I desperate? Yeah, I was probably desperate. I wish I would've never done this."

Pettitte's rationalization – he used HGH to recover from injuries, not to throw harder or lift more weights or gain an advantage – was specious at best. His claim that he wouldn't have used HGH had it been banned by baseball was even more dubious. Its use without a prescription was illegal by federal government standards, which, at last check, usurped those of Major League Baseball.

"When I used it in 2002, I felt like it was the right thing to do in my heart," Pettitte said. "Some people might believe that's hard to understand. … It was something that I thought about for a few days. I just thought it was the right thing to do."

The Yankees were in no mood to judge. Rivera, Posada and Jeter stood by Pettitte, even after Posada on Sunday said he believes Clemens' side of the story – he never used performance-enhancing drugs – which stands in stark contract with Pettitte's.

New York's brass, too, embraced Pettitte. He met with George, Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, apologized, asked for their forgiveness and received it. During the news conference, general manager Brian Cashman sat to Pettitte's left and manager Joe Girardi to his right, each looking inward and nodding his head, affirming Pettitte like a kid who goofed rather than a 35-year-old man who has won 201 major league games and willingly allowed another man to inject him with illicit drugs through the belly button.

Of course, the Yankees don't see it that way, the blinders a product of a sport-wide ignorance to performance-enhancing drugs ripping through baseball like crack infiltrated big cities in the '80s. The majority of the Yankees probably were clean, though a majority constitutes just 13 of 25 players, and if even one was cheating, it at least puts a scratch or dent into the shiny trophies New York so proudly displays.

Nonetheless, the Yankees brought Pettitte back for $16 million and didn't think enough of his transgressions to void the contract even though Pettitte almost surely knew of his name's inclusion in the Mitchell Report the day he signed it. Though Pettitte said he learned of it a few days before the report's release, Brian McNamee on Dec. 5 warned Jim Murray, an employee of Pettitte's agents, that he had given George Mitchell's investigators Pettitte and Clemens' names.

Pettitte signed Dec. 6.

With attention pelting him like acid rain, Pettitte said he contemplated retiring and that if the Yankees asked him to quit today, he would. Still, he arrived early Monday, threw a 35-pitch bullpen and readied himself for spring training games, which start in less than two weeks.

"I'm convinced he came back to play because he wants to," Girardi said.

Whatever his motivation – the money, the respite from sworn testimony, the desire to win the Yankees' 27th championship – Pettitte is here, and though his lawyers said he won't address any more questions about performance-enhancing drugs, they'll be tough to avoid.

Pettitte said he has not talked with Clemens since the hearing and only once in the last month. The lone subject he declined to touch was Clemens' allegation that Pettitte "misremembers" their conversation about Clemens' HGH use. Pettitte said he hopes he and Clemens can salvage their friendship, even though his testimony could cause the Justice Department to seek a perjury charge against Clemens.

"Even though the truth hurts sometimes and you don't want to share it, you have to get it out there," Pettitte said. "The truth will set you free, and I feel like I'm going to be able to sleep a lot better at night."

At the end of the inquisition, Girardi patted Pettitte on the back and Cashman tapped his chest. Pettitte stood from his seat, walked toward his teammates and hugged them. The embraces lasted, as though to pardon him from his past.

Andy Pettitte was a Yankee. For better or worse.