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| Originally Aired: December 19, 2007 |
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Steroid Report Raises Questions on Baseball's Future |
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| Former Sen. George Mitchell released the results of his 20-month probe into the use of steroids in Major League Baseball last week. Dozens of players, including seven time Cy Young award winning Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada, were named in the report. Two sportswriters answered your questions. |
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RAY SUAREZ: Welcome to this week's edition of Insider Forum, produced by the Online NewsHour. I'm Ray Suarez. Former Sen. George Mitchell dropped a bombshell of a report on the world of baseball last week, revealing dozens of players, including seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, have used performance-enhancing drugs. Other players named include Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada. The report is the result of 20 months of investigation by Mitchell and exposes a widely suspected dark side of the baseball industry. With us to talk about the fallout from the Mitchell report, and to answer your questions on steroids in baseball, are two guests. The first is Lance Williams, San Francisco Chronicle reporter and co-author of the book "Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports." And also joining us is John Feinstein. He is a sports commentator for NPR's Morning Edition program, and has contributed to the Washington Post [and] Sporting News Radio. He's also a former special contributor for Sports Illustrated. And welcome to you both. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Thanks, Ray. RAY SUAREZ: Well, let me get your opening impressions of the Mitchell report, its upsides, its downsides. John Feinstein, why don't you get us started? JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, I think that, as you said -- you used the word "widely suspected," and I don't think there was any shock when this report came out, either in the numbers of players -- I think 92 were named, all together -- or, to be honest, in some of the names -- inside the game of baseball, anyway. I mean, Roger Clemens had been whispered about for years, but there was no proof, like the proof that Lance and his partner, Mike -- Mark Fainaru-Wada provided on Barry Bonds in their book. So -- and it was interesting to me that, immediately, baseball people started circling the wagons, you know, saying, "Well, a lot of this is circumstantial, a lot of this is hearsay." They focused, for example, on Brian Roberts, a second-baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, who another player said had been told by Roberts that he had tried steroids. And everybody said, "Oh, how can you use that in the report, when" -- and, you know, this was a terrible thing that had been done to Brian Roberts. And yesterday, Brian Roberts said, "Yup, I did it, I took steroids." And I think the report, even though it's not -- you know, it wouldn't necessarily -- some of it certainly would not hold up in a court of law; I think, in the court of public opinion, it holds up very well. RAY SUAREZ: Lance Williams? LANCE WILLIAMS: You know, I was struck by the fact that baseball would release such a report unread even by the commissioner. Most American businesses in the 21st century, if they have lawyers in to investigate their suspected bad practices, hold that pretty closely when the report's done, and maybe put out an executive summary. This was -- it was, you know, immense detail, and, you know, fascinating for a reporter, probably, if you looked at it as a business analyst, perhaps a little corporate over-sharing. RAY SUAREZ: What do you make of John Feinstein's reaction to the complaints about the sourcing, whether it's hearsay, whether people were named incidentally in other people's stories of how they got drugs who perhaps were unfairly tainted by this? LANCE WILLIAMS: Well, I saw eyewitness statements, which is not hearsay, in many of the cases. I saw documents backing up some of the statements. And I also saw that the people who were to be named were given the opportunity, you know, before the report came out, to come in and discuss it, and then, in some cases, were given letters about what was going to be in the report, when they declined the initial interview. So, I thought the level of proof was certainly adequate for the purposes. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Oh, I did, too, by the way, Ray. I don't -- I don't want anybody to misunderstand. I -- you know, that -- I think the report was absolutely fair. I think that a lot -- again, a lot of baseball apologists wanted to try to taint the report. Certainly, the Roger Clemens/Andy Pettitte evidence was firsthand from a trainer who said he had injected them, and now Pettitte has come out and said it's true. Clemens, of course, is still denying it, trying to save his place in the Hall of Fame. But I think that there's no question that, in terms of the fairness, Lance's point about the fact that the players -- every player was given the opportunity to come in and tell his side, and, because they had been advised by the union not to do so, almost none of them did. |
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John Feinstein
National Public Radio |
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 Roger Clemens is never going to play again. He's done. Barry Bonds is never going to play again. So, there's nothing baseball can do to them.  |
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Evidence holding up in court
RAY SUAREZ: How is this different from a legal investigation? Senator Mitchell didn't have subpoena power. Did he have access to all the records he might have needed if he was doing a criminal investigation? Lance?LANCE WILLIAMS: He got two dope dealers, courtesy of the BALCO investigators. They turned over McNamee and Radomski. And, from that, you have this cascade of names. Imagine if he had subpoena power. Imagine if he had hooked into half a dozen other Jim Rads who know ballplayers. He really had a limited view of drug use in baseball and came out with this huge report. This was -- if you're thinking about the sport, if you put it in those terms, it's got to be a pervasive drug culture now if, really, from talking to two guys, he could produce this kind of network. RAY SUAREZ: One of the more surprising reactions that I saw, as I looked at billboards, online, letters to the editor, sports radio, was people questioning whether George Mitchell was the right guy, because of his ties to the Boston Red Sox. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Yeah, that -- that came up throughout the investigation, and the fact that Mitchell has been on the Board of Directors of the Red Sox. And I think, if you look at the report -- excuse me -- there's no bias at all. You know, a lot of people said, "Well, there are a lot of Yankees in the report." Well, that's because a lot of, as Lance pointed out, the sourcing came out of New York. Kirk Radomski was a New York Mets clubhouse guy. Kevin McNamee worked as a Yankees trainer and strength coach, and worked with Clemens and Pettitte -- for Clemens first in Toronto, and then Clemens and Pettitte in New York. So, you know, it does have a lot to do with sourcing. What Lance is saying about the fact that there are a lot of guys out there who didn't get caught by this report, because Mitchell did not have subpoena power, because he did not have the cooperation of the players union, is an important point. Ninety-two guys got caught in this -- in this, really, not-that-wide net. Imagine if they did have subpoena power, if they were able to get to everybody's guy and get more evidence. I don't know what percentage of Major League Baseball players would have been caught. I have heard, from players, that probably the -- if you count guys who experimented with it, in addition to the regular users, the number of players in the '90s using steroids was probably close to -- the percentage was probably close to 50, maybe even more, percent of Major League ballplayers. RAY SUAREZ: Lance, as a connoisseur of this, as someone who's been working this story for years, were you interested in the way that it moved from team to team with players who moved from team to team, that there were some players who were almost evangelists for steroids? LANCE WILLIAMS: Well, you know, my background is in crime reporting, and I used to cover drug gangs. And it's a familiar modality, the way guys meet guys to hook up. But it is interesting. I think, you go back to Radomski getting together with Lenny Dykstra, and, from that, there is a -- you know, connection after connection after connection made. It's really interesting. But the -- you know, the backdrop is, this is not behavior that's really sanctioned. "It's okay to do. Nobody's really going to get in trouble for it. And, why not?" -- that seems to be the attitude that prevailed for years. RAY SUAREZ: Let's go to our questions from around the country. Bob Smith writes, from New York, "Is the -- is Major League Baseball inevitably doomed to a never-ending cat-and-mouse game? It seems like they're trying to stay one step ahead of the testers. What's the remedy?" JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, I think that's a -- that's an important point, because that's always going to be the case in sports, not just baseball. You know, drug use -- performance-enhancing drugs have been a part of the Olympics, you know, as we know, for years and years. They've certainly been a part of football. Football was way ahead of baseball, in terms of drug testing; but now, with HGH being the drug of choice, I believe, in both football and baseball, and it only being detectable through a blood test -- and there is no blood testing in either sport -- right now the chemists are ahead of the testers. And I think one of the important things that needs to come out of this report in the cat-and-mouse game is for the players and the owners to get together and say, "Okay, we know we need to blood test in order to catch HGH use. We can't wait around for urinalysis to catch it, because, if we do, by then the chemists will be on to the next undetectable drug." LANCE WILLIAMS: I think the other trend that we'll see is increasing involvement of law enforcement. That's already occurring in Europe, in the context of dope testing; and we're seeing here, where the BALCO investigative team kicks up a steroid dealer, they decide they don't want to prosecute him, and so, they turn him over to baseball, under threat of imprisonment, unless he tells what he knows. So, that'll be the additional dynamic that could evolve that will complicate matters for a player who wants to use banned drugs. RAY SUAREZ: Certainly, in cycling in recent years, the involvement of law enforcement and the court systems of various European countries have been very energetic, and they've taken down entire teams and done internationally coordinated busts, stings. It's been -- well, you -- we have -- I guess we have to see whether it's enough to save cycling, but they've been very aggressive in recent -- LANCE WILLIAMS: Yeah. And I think we're headed that way in American sports now. The Albany, New York, district attorney is -- the investigation of online steroid dealing has kicked out all these names of athletes, for example, this year. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Plus, the investigation in Florida and the one in Arizona, too, Lance, right? LANCE WILLIAMS: Yeah. Right. RAY SUAREZ: Hector Risemberg writes, from Boston, Mass., "I hope that Senator Mitchell's recommendation that no one get punished is followed. The use of steroids was simply too widespread and ignored by management to point the finger at a few people who were caught. Few, if any, of the allegations would probably stand up in the court of law. Why was this report published if there was no chance to cross-examine any of the witnesses?" JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, there was a chance to cross-examine the witnesses. The witnesses simply -- the players simply refused to come in and testify on their own behalf; again, because the union told them not to, you know. And I think that it is probably not practical for Major League Baseball to punish people who were named in this investigation, although, as Lance points out, some of it is firsthand, and, some of it, there is documentation on the sales, particularly with Radomski sales to players. But I think it's probably not practical, because -- for example, Roger Clemens is never going to play again. He's done. Barry Bonds is never going to play again. So, there's nothing baseball can do to them. And I think -- only 23 of the 92 were active last year, or 33 of the 92 -- so, I think that the punishment needs to be, for a guy like Clemens, for a guy like Bonds, for a guy like Tejada, the most famous players named in the investigation -- Sammy Sosa -- is that we -- that the baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame need to not vote for these guys for the Hall of Fame. That's the way you punish them. RAY SUAREZ: Ever, or for a -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Ever, in my opinion. I think they've damaged the game. And I don't think you should be voted into the Hall of Fame if you damage the game and if you cheat. Now, both Bonds and Clemens clearly had Hall of Fame numbers before they used steroids. But if you choose to cheat the game, you should be punished for cheating the game, in my opinion. I know a lot of people disagree with me. LANCE WILLIAMS: You know, Commissioner Selig's practice in the -- has been to suspend people for whatever punishment applied at the time the drug use that's been discovered was going on. So, I haven't gone back and checked, but, to the extent there are people who were using after 2003, as -- in this report, it seems like it's possible he's going to hit them with the 2-week suspension or 15-game suspension or whatever applied in the first instance where punishment was ramped up, and then it's a 50-gamer now for more recent use. I'd bet, if there's punishment, that would be the pattern. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Although it's interesting to note that most of the guys who have now come forward and confessed have either confessed to HGH use, pre-2005 --which is before it was banned, or to steroid use pre-2003, before there was testing. Now, steroids had been banned in 1991 by Fay Vincent -- but there was no testing for it til 2003. |
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Lance Williams
San Francisco Chronicle |
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| I think it would be great if a player, who was wrongly name, sued baseball for defamation. I think that would be a absolutely appropriate thing to do. But my hunch is, this is a real list, these are real steroid users. |
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Innocent until proven guilty
RAY SUAREZ: Don and Carol Schieck, from Palo Cedro, Calif., write, "We strongly feel that the records should be taken away from any athletes who have been found to have been on body-enhancing drugs. Do you think this will happen? What should be done with those records?"LANCE WILLIAMS: Well, you know, -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: I don't think it'll -- go ahead, Lance, I'm sorry. LANCE WILLIAMS: Well, I was going to say, we just don't do that in baseball, do we? I mean, you can still look up "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's numbers, including from the 1919 season, when they threw the World Series. What we were discussing before, the withholding of the Hall of Fame, is the much more likely sanction, in terms of what baseball has practiced in the past. JOHN FEINSTEIN: And the other thing is that it's almost impossible to do. Let's say you wanted to expunge all of Barry Bonds' home runs from 1999 forward. What happens, then, to the ERAs of the pitchers who threw those home-run pitches? What happens to the records of those games? It's just too complicated, from a logistical point of view. Lance is right; the way you have to get these guys is through the Hall of Fame. RAY SUAREZ: Robert Wilson, from Estero, Fla., writes, "Will this finally have an impact on Bud Selig's tenure as commissioner? It should. And, while the public cannot fire a union official, is anybody calling for Donald Fehr, the executive director of the Players Union, to resign?" JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, I -- Bud Selig is -- has said that he's going to retire at the end of this term. He's 70 years old. And I think the owners are very much behind Bud Selig. So, no, I don't think it'll affect his tenure at all. And, overall, Donald Fehr has done a job for the players union. He's helped make them rich. They've won every battle they've had in collective bargaining with the owners. The only place where he has, I think, made bad mistakes is in the area of drugs. But the players see him as their protector in this area. I disagree with that. I think that the way he should protect his players is by trying to keep them off of these drugs, because these drugs kill. And -- but the players see him as a protector. So, no, I don't think either of their tenures will be affected. LANCE WILLIAMS: You know, in his way, the commissioner did expose the problem and has moved to reform. I mean, it's been slow and -- and it's been a little idiosyncratic in the approach, but baseball's come a long way on this issue from, oh, '03. So -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Only when public -- LANCE WILLIAMS: -- he deserves -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: -- publicly humiliated, though. LANCE WILLIAMS: True. But he does get some credit, I think, for being swept along with the tide, at minimum. RAY SUAREZ: Phil Olson writes, from Honolulu, "Why don't sports writers, team owners, players, and legislators hold the pharmaceuticals companies responsible for the distribution of steroids? I look at players as victims, not perpetrators. Come on, get the bastards who are producing and distributing, and making enormous profits on the steroids scandals, and put them out of business and behind bars, where they belong." LANCE WILLIAMS: I think, perhaps the listener misunderstands what we're talking about here. This isn't like crack cocaine. These are medicines that are created for medical purposes, and then are misused. Human growth hormone is a wonderful treatment. If you ever know anybody who's got a little boy or a little girl who's way, way undersized and coming into their teen years, growth hormone can allow them to reach normal height and have a normal life. If you've ever known anybody with AIDS wasting disease, steroids and growth hormone can help them put on weight and not literally die of starvation. So, the medical companies are not creating these things to cater to, you know, illicit use. They're -- they do have these uses that are great for performance enhancement in sports, and they're misused for that purpose. RAY SUAREZ: And I'm not -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Yeah, I agree with that. I take -- RAY SUAREZ: -- I'm not sure, John, how you would do it. JOHN FEINSTEIN: -- I take a steroid, Ray. I take a steroid when I have the gout: prednisone. And so, I'm a steroid user, myself. But I take it, you know, for -- I get a prescription from my doctor when I take it, and then that -- that's the whole point. It's almost like it -- there are so many things that are created for the right purpose in the world, that are used for wrong purposes. And, as Lance says, this is another example. RAY SUAREZ: Joyce writes, from Dallas, Texas, "Just because a player chose to follow his attorney's and union's advice and not participate in Mitchell's investigation should not automatically earn him a presumption of guilt. Likewise, just because one trainer, who was caught distributing drugs and named several athletes as users, doesn't make -- necessarily make the accuser's information credible. How do we know that Brian McNamee is not lying? And should these players sue to have the evidence provided in a court of law?" JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, number one, Andy Pettitte has already said that Brian -- that Kevin McNamee was telling the truth. That's number one. Number two, you know, there isn't a presumption of guilt because you don't talk to the investigators, but it certainly puts your side of the story in jeopardy, because you've chosen not to tell it. And, thus far -- and Radomski didn't just say, you know, "Lenny Dykstra and this guy and that guy bought drugs from me," he produced checks, he produced receipts, he produced letters requesting drugs being sent out. So, there was plenty of physical evidence, it's not just a "he said, he said" situation. And I know that a lot of fans -- and I understand this, too, as a baseball fan -- don't want to hear that their heroes are cheats, particularly in the case of the -- of great players, like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and Miguel Tejada and Sammy Sosa and on down the line. But the fact is that all the evidence, both circumstantial and physical and, in the case of McNamee -- VOICE: Uh-huh. JOHN FEINSTEIN: -- firsthand, points to these guys being guilty. RAY SUAREZ: Lance? LANCE WILLIAMS: The alternative approach would mean that if the player chooses not to discuss the allegations with Mitchell, Mitchell can't put their name in the report, and that's a [inaudible] dynamic. I think it would be great if a player, who was wrongly name, sued baseball for defamation. I think that would be a absolutely appropriate thing to do. But my hunch is, this is a real list, these are real steroid users, and I don't think we're going to see defamation complaints, just as, when my partner and I were sued by Barry Bonds for our book; we weren't sued for slander or defamation, we were sued for alleged unfair business practices. They don't want to put the facts on the line here, because the facts are what they are. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Yeah, discovery might be a difficult thing for any of these guys in a legal case, should they sue. |
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John Feinstein
National Public Radio |
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| If you go back to the first Super Bowl, in 1967, that year there were five players in the NFL who weighed more than 300 pounds. I -- the year I researched the book, there were almost 300 players in the NFL who weighed more than 300 pounds.
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Steroids in other sports
RAY SUAREZ: Kola Sunmonu writes, from Mitchellville, Md., "Was the evidence against Bonds stronger than the evidence against Clemens? People seem to be treating Clemens differently than Bonds."Lance Williams? LANCE WILLIAMS: Yes. The Bonds evidence is more extensive than what I've read about the Clemens evidence. Bonds is -- they've got his drug calendars, it's the -- you know, the schedules. They've got a tape recording of his trainer, Greg Anderson, describing the undetectable drugs he was giving to Bonds in 2003, and they've also got statements from some of the defendants in the BALCO case about providing Bonds with drugs. So, the -- there is a sort of richer lode. I don't believe, in Clemens' case, they have, for instance, calendars or schedules or anything like that, any documentary material like that. What they have is a eyewitness account from the drug provider. RAY SUAREZ: "The Mitchell report," asks Vernon, from Washington, D.C., "seems to mix allegations of steroid use discovered on the basis of its own investigations and allegations previously reported by the media. While no one who has followed baseball can now doubt the existence of widespread and systemic abuse, how confident can we be about the accusations leveled against particular players, especially when we don't know the quality of the underlying investigations?" JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, again, I -- let's go back to what we discussed earlier. (A) if there were players who were wrongly named, I would think they would be lining up to file lawsuits right away against those who unfairly -- quote/unquote "unfairly" accused them. And, again, I do find it fascinating that Brian Roberts, who was, sort of, jumped on by the baseball apologists as the poster boy for being unfairly named in this report, has now admitted that he did, in fact, take steroids and was fairly named in the report. So, I think that you're not going to find, as Lance said, very many people named in the report who can -- who are going to file lawsuits, because I think they know, in virtually all these cases, if not all of them, that they were, in fact, steroid users. LANCE WILLIAMS: When Mitchell looks at a press report or report from a book, he attempts to run it out. I mean, he -- if you read the report, he makes efforts to get his own information. Part of his problem gathering material was that the prosecutors in the BALCO case put all their witnesses off limits to him, and so, there's this whole lobe of activity that he really wants to get at, and really can't get the documents or the witnesses that would allow him to do so. And so, he does make due with citing the press reports and the report in our book, and also talking to the Giants' front office, for example. RAY SUAREZ: We got a couple of questions about football. Dr. Barry Winnick, from East Amherst, N.Y., and Stephen Seplow, from Philadelphia, write, "Am I missing something with the baseball drug story? You have 50 to 60 players that have used performance-enhancing drugs. That's Little League. If you look at the NFL, where you might find 50 to 60 players who have not used these drugs. The Patriots have a 38-year-old cover linebacker who's bigger and faster than he was at 26. I guess he just matures later. I find it hard to believe that so many 300-pound men can run as fast as they do in the NFL without some chemical help." JOHN FEINSTEIN: Well, again, that gets back to what I said early on, Ray, is that there's no question in my mind that HGH has become the drug of choice in the NFL. I did a book on the NFL, back in 2004, and it was apparent to me that the way these guys are getting to be so huge is not just from working out. And, in fact, if you go back to the first Super Bowl, in 1967, that year there were five players in the NFL who weighed more than 300 pounds. I -- the year I researched the book, there were almost 300 players in the NFL who weighed more than 300 pounds. So, the point is well taken, and that's what I'm getting at when I say that they really, really need, in both the NFL and in baseball, to find a way to test for human growth hormone. RAY SUAREZ: Lance, do you make a difference -- and AD Schlesinger, from New York City, writes, "Do you regard it as different, make any -- distinguish between using substances to recover from injury and using substances to bulk up for better performance? I'm not sure I see a difference, but I'm wondering whether others do." LANCE WILLIAMS: You know, the performance enhancers do both for you; and so, when a player says, "I just used it to get over shoulder surgery," or whatever, he's getting both the benefit of the recovery and the benefit of the muscle-building and so forth. RAY SUAREZ: Because Andy Pettitte tried to make that distinction -- LANCE WILLIAMS: Oh, you know -- RAY SUAREZ: -- in his explanation. LANCE WILLIAMS: Yeah. JOHN FEINSTEIN: Right. A lot of guys have. LANCE WILLIAMS: Sure. It's the alternate to "I have a hormone deficiency" explanations. The drugs aren't -- you know, growth hormone is not authorized, medically, for those purposes. So, it's an off-label, not-prohibited use. And so, it's illegal, and so, it's wrong. And so, I guess I don't make a distinction. I know, if you were hurt, it would be an additional reason to turn to the drugs. And I understand it. But the guy who's playing clean doesn't have benefit of that, and so, it's an unfair advantage -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: The other thing -- LANCE WILLIAMS: -- in that regard. JOHN FEINSTEIN: The other thing, Ray, is, one of the great myths about steroid use is that all it does is bulk you up. In fact, one of the most important things it does for an athlete is, it allows him to recover, not just from injury, but from exercise. And, you know, you hear one of the excuses -- for example, people said about Barry Bonds all the time, "Well, he got so big because he had this incredibly workout regimen." Well, he couldn't have had that workout regimen without the steroids, because the steroids allow an athlete to recover from exercise much more quickly; and thus, they can up their exercise regimens greatly because of them. LANCE WILLIAMS: And get back in the gym the next day and -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Exactly. LANCE WILLIAMS: -- do it for two more hours, and -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Exactly right. LANCE WILLIAMS: -- away you go. |
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Lance Williams
San Francisco Chronicle |
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| For many of them, the pro contract is the difference between a wonderful lifestyle and driving a recycling truck down home, and it's going to be a tremendous temptation. As long as the temptation exists, there'll have to be enforcement efforts. |
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Enforcement for the future
RAY SUAREZ: Well, how long is it going to take baseball to get out from under this? You know, the McGwire/Sosa home-run chase was, at the time, ballyhooed as the thing that was going to help baseball get out from under the shadow of the strike. And people who had seen wiry little Sammy Sosa when he first came up, and now looked at this fire-hydrant-built man with a 21-inch neck, weren't making -- asking too many questions about how that happened to happen. Is this -- is this the first step toward the -- toward recovery, or is this going to be something that baseball is going to have to reckon with for a long time?LANCE WILLIAMS: You know -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: I -- LANCE WILLIAMS: -- I think you're -- JOHN FEINSTEIN: Go ahead, Lance. LANCE WILLIAMS: I think you'll probably have the occasional drug scandal for years to come, as long as the testing is not 100-percent foolproof. You're going to have enforcement efforts, because people will be tempted. They're young, competitive men. For many of them, the pro contract is the difference between, you know, a wonderful lifestyle and driving a recycling truck down home, and it's going to be a tremendous temptation. And so, as long as the temptation exists, there'll have to be enforcement efforts; and so, you're going to have this stuff, I'm afraid. JOHN FEINSTEIN: I -- RAY SUAREZ: John? JOHN FEINSTEIN: I agree, but I also think this is a step in the right direction. It's kind of a cleansing. It doesn't, you know, completely purify the game; there are still drug users out there who haven't been caught, a lot of them. But I think the fact that Bonds is now going away, the sport is no longer going to be held hostage by him, and the fact that this report is out, is definitely a step in the right direction. RAY SUAREZ: Well, gentlemen, that's all the time we have for today. I want to thank both of our guests -- Lance Williams, of the San Francisco Chronicle, John Feinstein, of NPR -- for helping us get a better look at steroids in baseball. And thanks, of course, to all of our viewers who sent in questions for this week's edition of Insider Forum. We can't get to every question, but I hope we answered many of them. Be sure to check back soon for your chance to e-mail questions for next week's expert panel. See you next time. I'm Ray Suarez.
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