10:30 PM Eastern

So here I am in beautiful Rochester, New York, taking advantage of the fact that The Billie is off school today to spend a couple of days with my girlies at the Strong Museum of Play, and I’m sitting just outside the Grossology exhibit when I get a phone call from the radio station to ask me if I could come on tonight to comment on “the Zaun thing”. Huh? Turns out he’s finally broken his silence about the Mitchell Report in an e-mail to John Lott of the National Post, who is a phenomenal baseball reporter, by the way.

The story, though I’m sure you’ve heard by now, is that Zaun’s check to Kirk Radomski was actually written to Jason Grimsley, a former teammate and noted steroid and hGH user, and Grimsley filled Radomski’s name in since Zaun had left the cheque blank. Zaun thinks he probably owed Grimsley $500 from a basketball bet.

The first thing that story made me think was that it’s against the rules of baseball to gamble, too, but I guess Zaun figures that copping to gambling will be easier on him than admitting steroid use.

The next thing I thought was, “Wow.” I have heard of some great excuses for testing positive for steroids in my day, from having too much sex the night before (raising testosterone levels) to eating steroid-infused veal to eating pigeon pie made from juiced racing pigeons to the internal presence of an unborn twin to spiked sarsaparilla, orange juice, vitamins and even toothpaste! I have heard of a guy who said that the ‘roids he was caught with were intended for his anemic dog, and of course, countless others have said that they bought steroids, even took them out of the package, but after several days of agonizing over the decision, finally chose not to use them. This, however, was the first time I had ever heard of someone saying that the check he paid for his ‘roids with wasn’t written by him.

I want to believe Gregg Zaun. Honestly. I just find it very difficult. Which is not to say that I think he’s lying, I just think that his story is very, very hard to believe. The points in his favour include the fact that there was only one cheque of his that Radomski had, and it was only for $500 – most of the other cheques were for much more money. Also, Zaun didn’t bulk up until a couple of years ago. He came to Spring Training noticeably bigger in 2006, I want to say, and said that he’d cleaned up his act and rededicated himself to strength and fitness, and put on close to 30 pounds of muscle in the off-season, if I remember correctly. The cheque in question was written in 2001. Finally, Lott reported in his story that the handwriting of Radomski’s name on Zaun’s cheque appeared to match the handwriting on Grimsley’s cheques to Radomski. I have not had a chance to look again at the cheques.

The points against include the fact that Radomski wasn’t the only one who fingered Zaun as a user. Zaun was also one of eight players identified by former Marlins’ employee Luis Perez as people he supplied with steroids. Zaun says that Perez’ story is completely made up. But Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, Lance Armstrong and others have said the same thing many times (not with regards to Luis Perez, hopefully you get where I’m going). Also, the type of player Zaun is is pretty much Exhibit A for potential users of illegal performance enhancing drugs. A career back-up, never with a steady job, someone who moved around from team to team, hanging on at the bottom of a roster. Those are the types of players who turn to the juice in order to secure their careers, their finances, perhaps their big-league pensions. I’m not saying that Zaun’s career was at the same level as a guy like Howie Clark or Adam Piatt, but he certainly was never an established everyday player who never had to worry about where next year’s cheques were coming from.

I haven’t said anything about Zaun’s qualities as a person, because there’s no way I know enough about who he really is for my opinion to matter. In the years I have known Gregg Zaun, I have known him more often than not to be accessible, agreeable and bright. He knows why the media is there, and he knows what he has to do to help us get our jobs done. He’s a big fan of 1980′s hair rock, which automatically puts someone into my good books. But there’s not a chance that I really know anything about Zaun’s real personality, so the fact that I like him certainly doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t take steroids, or concoct a story about a blankish cheque flipped to a teammate in disgust over a lost bet.

What I absolutely don’t like about this whole thing is that it took Zaun two months to address the accusation, and that when he finally did, he did it via e-mail. Obviously, a lot more can be garnered on the part of a reporter from a face-to-face interview, and Zaun didn’t want to put himself through that. He said that people misunderstood his silence, and he’s right. I certainly wouldn’t have thought that he needed two months to gather himself. He’s still very obviously not completely gathered, because he couldn’t answer the questions face-to-face.

I don’t blame Zaun for not talking to the Mitchell Report investigators. I don’t believe him, though, when he says that he would have been there ready to talk had he known that his name was linked to Radomski. It seems odd to me that upon hearing that his name was in the report, Zaun would have thought, “Oh yeah, it’s that Luis Perez load, no need for me to say anything about that.” Truth is, nobody named in that report through BALCO, Radomski or Brian McNamee spoke to investigators. The MLBPA pretty much ordered them not to co-operate.

Finally, I don’t think that this has any effect at all on the Blue Jays on or off the field, but I’m interested to see what the fans’ reaction to Zaun will be. I expect it’ll be the same as it always has been.

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Just for a second, I want to give my thoughts about the congressional hearings on Wednesday. I thought I’d pretty much said all I was going to say the night before, and nothing HUGE came up at the hearings, but some people have asked what I think. Here ya go:

I’m thoroughly appalled that the questions from the representatives came down along party lines – Republicans for Clemens, Democrats against him. That stunned and infuriated me. How on Earth is this thing a partisan debate at all?

I continue not to believe a word Roger Clemens is saying. I almost fell out of my chair when he said that the only thing he’s done wrong is be too nice a guy. Hilarious. I didn’t deal with Clemens much when he was here with the Blue Jays, but in exactly zero of my dealings with him did I come away thinking, “Wow, what a nice guy!”. And how awful was it for Clemens to go talk to his nanny first before giving Congress information about how to contact her? Ridiculous, and Clemens was appropriately raked over the coals for that.

He didn’t have an answer as to why Andy Pettitte, who he called a friend and a very honest man, would corroborate McNamee’s story. And the “misremembered” thing? Please. Anyway, even if we accept Clemens’ story is true, and he told Pettitte in 1999 or 2000 that it was his wife Debbie who was taking hGH, wasn’t the story about Debbie that she juiced to get ready for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot in 2003? Doesn’t quite connect. Also, why did Clemens’ lawyers call the story about Debbie’s drug use a “colossal lie” two days before Clemens confirmed it on the stand?

Look, Brian McNamee is no prize, and he certainly didn’t come out of the hearing smelling like a rose, but at least he had a very good reason NOT to lie. And why wouldn’t he have kept those syringes and gauze pads? A slimeball knows a slimeball – and he was right. As soon as the bright lights started shining on Clemens, down went McNamee.

But Clemens brought a fleet of buses with him to DC, and proceeded to throw a different person under each one, from McNamee to Pettitte to his wife to his agents (for not allowing him to talk to the Mitchell investigators) to the Jays’ team doctor, Ron Taylor, who is as fine a man as you’ll find.

The whole thing was unseemly at best, from Clemens’ glad-handing of his future inquisitors to his bullying of the ex-nanny to certain representatives drooling all over him – what jersey are you going to wear to the Hall of Fame? You’ve got to be kidding me. But as long as it’s Congresspeople asking the questions, and not lawyers or even judges, that’s the crap we’re going to get.

Final word – even though there’s a story circulating that since Clemens is a good friend of George W. Bush, W. would pardon him if he did wind up getting convicted of perjury, that won’t happen. Look how long it’s going to be between Barry Bonds’ statements to the Grand Jury and his trial for perjury, never mind the decision. You think Clemens could get tried and convicted by the time Bush’s second term comes to its merciful conclusion in January? It’ll never happen.

Comments are always welcome, as is e-mail to wilner590@hotmail.com

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