PED’s back in the forefront -- Tiger, Armstrong, Moss –- and no one can be certain of the truth

During my weekly appearance on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show yesterday, Tony asked me if I thought Tiger Woods had used performance enhancing drugs. My answer was direct: “I don’t know.”

I’m well aware of the circumstantial evidence, or as some people call it, the “PED checklist,” that seems to fit Woods in many ways. I’m also aware of his categorical denials and the fact that he was one of the more outspoken golfers in favor of drug-testing when the subject first became an issue on The PGA Tour. Since neither Woods nor anyone in his inner circle confides in me very often the only honest answer was that I simply don’t know.

After I’d finished my segment, Tony, as he was going to break, said dismissively: “’I don’t know,’ that’s a really good radio answer.”

That, to be honest, annoyed me. Tony and I make fun of one another all the time and it is almost always good-spirited. I called him during the break and asked him if he would have preferred I pretend to have inside information or that I just rip Tiger and declare him guilty of all sins—something I’ve been accused of doing (incorrectly in my humble opinion) by Tony and others in the past. Tony conceded the point and that was that.

Maybe I was sensitive to the situation because the night before, while watching TV, I heard a golf writer say this: “I know Tiger pretty good and I’m sure he never took PED’s.”

Really? If there’s one thing we know for sure about Tiger since November 27th it is that those who thought they, ‘knew him pretty good,’ were fooling themselves. I used to joke about it when Tiger would call guys by nicknames during press conferences—Tiger’s like a hockey player, he loves adding Y’s to people’s names or shortening them—and you could almost see the guys blow up with pride at the recognition.

No one—let me repeat this NO ONE—in the media knows Tiger, ‘pretty good,’ and none of us have a clue as to whether he has used PED’s or not.

All of which brings me in a long-winded way to today’s drug-accusations: Floyd Landis, four years after being stripped of his Tour de France title and vehemently denying he did any blood-doping, now says he systematically doped his blood for at least four years. He also says that Lance Armstrong and just about every American who ever rode a bike—and I think Paul Revere in prepping for his midnight ride on a horse—was involved in blood doping.

There’s also the story about Santana Moss of The Washington Redskins receiving HGH from Dr. HGH himself, Anthony Galea—who also treated Woods in this six degrees of Everyone’s on Drugs World—and everyone here in Washington being in a tizzy over that.

You know what: Santana Moss doesn’t matter. Oh he matters to the Redskins and their fans who want him on the field September 13th against the Cowboys but there’s no moral issue here for most people. The only real question on Moss isn’t so much did he do it but if he did it how big a penalty will Commissioner Roger Goodell slap on him for the transgression. Moss issued a non-denial, denial a couple days ago—a weak one at that—and Coach Mike Shanahan reverted to the, “just because he saw a doctor (who hands out HGH like jelly beans) doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

Fine. As with all athletes in team sports, Moss may be an HGH user but he’s WASHINGTON’s HGH user and people will stand behind him—as long as they believe he can get deep on the Cowboys secondary.

Lance Armstrong is an entirely different story. Armstrong is a genuine American hero: a guy who not only recovered from cancer to win The Tour de France seven times, but has used his fame to raise millions and millions of dollars for cancer research. You can call him cocky and arrogant and a lousy husband/boyfriend or any other name you want but there’s no getting away from what the guy has done and from the people he has inspired.

On Thursday, the fifth graders at my daughter’s school put on a ‘wax museum,’ exhibition in which each kid picked an American hero and dressed up like them as if they were part of a wax museum. You pressed a button on the kid and they read you that person’s biography. My daughter was Lance Armstrong.

Which is yet another reason on a long list why I don’t want to believe Armstrong was a cheater. Landis has now become another voice claiming he was, giving details about—among other things—storing blood for Armstrong in an apartment in 2002. Armstrong has already pointed out that the race Landis claims he was in while this was going on took place in 2001, that Landis doesn’t even have his dates correct and has denied Landis’s charges. So have the other American riders accused by Landis. We’re still waiting for comment from Paul Revere.

I am skeptical of just about every person accused of using PED’s who denies using them because history shows that in almost all cases, the denier becomes the confessor at some point in time. How much would you like to bet that some time in the future Barry Bonds will write a book copping to everything, saying the pressure got to him after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke all the home run records in 1998.

Of course there’s a big difference between being skeptical and KNOWING. I can’t have it both ways can I? I can’t say, yeah, Moss is probably guilty because I don’t have any feelings for him at all and he plays for a team owned by a bad guy and then turn around and say that Armstrong is innocent because he’s a truly heroic figure and my daughter chose him as her subject for the wax museum exhibition.

If only life were that easy. If only I could sit on a TV set somewhere and say, ‘I know (fill-in-the-blank) pretty good and he would never use PED’s.’ I knew Mark McGwire, if not pretty good at least a little bit and I didn’t know he was using steroids. I wondered, but I didn’t know. I DO know a lot of college basketball coaches pretty good and I can’t swear to you that any of them cheat or any of them don’t cheat. I have my suspicions but, as with Armstrong and Moss and Paul Revere, I certainly don’t know one way or the other.

What’s saddest about this is that, know-it-alls aside, none of us DOES know and therefore we end up having to wonder about just about everyone. That’s really a terrible way to have to approach sports isn’t it?

Here’s the one and only thing I THINK I know for sure about sports right now: When they run The Presidents Race tonight at Nationals Park after the top of the fourth inning, Teddy Roosevelt will lose. Then again, someone said to me last night that word is Teddy’s going to break his five year losing streak the night Stephen Strasburg makes his debut.

If that happens then there is NOTHING I know for certain about sports.


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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

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All Over the Board Today - Lance Armstrong, WNBA, Favre, Halladay, Mets and Much More

I’m not exactly sure where to begin this morning. Part of me wants to point out just how remarkable Lane Armstrong’s third place finish was in The Tour de France. There’s a tendency among all of us, particularly here in the U.S. to skip over this phrase: “During the 2,150 mile tour…”

In fact, it is apparently so insignificant it wasn’t even mentioned n the story in today’s Washington Post. The Tour de France is as grueling as any event in sports. For Armstrong to come back at 37 after four years off the bike and finish third is amazing, almost as amazing as what Tom Watson did—in a completely different context of course—when he just about won The British Open eight days ago. (And no, I haven’t gotten over that one yet),

I don’t really understand how the tour works with riders from teams helping one another out or exactly why it will be so different next year when Armstrong and Alberto Contador ride on different teams but apparently it will be very different. It wouldn’t shock me at all if Armstrong wins again. He’s one of the most remarkable athletes of our time and I really don’t want to hear any more about the drug allegations until someone has proof.

That concludes the serious portion of today’s blog. I should note briefly though that I passed through Connecticut this weekend and picked up The Hartfort Courant, a very good newspaper. I couldn’t help but note that amidst the stories about the Yankees and Red Sox there was about two pages of coverage of the WNBA All-Star game which was taking place in Connecticut on Saturday.

A friend of mine pointed out that with the Courant’s two pages of coverage that would make a total of three pages of coverage nationwide.

Which reminded me of a meeting I had years ago with NBA Commissioner David Stern, someone I genuinely like and greatly respect. I was interviewing Stern for the book I wrote on Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich (The Punch). When we were finished, Stern said to me, ‘okay turn off your tape recorder, I’m going to yell at you now.’

I turned off the tape recorder. He then lectured me about the fact that I tend to be a bit skeptical about the women’s game. “Don’t you understand,” he said. “The WNBA is one of the keys to the NBA’s future.”

“Well David,” I answered, “then I think you’re in serious trouble.”

Eight years later, The Hartford Courtant notwithstanding, I stand by that statement.

Okay, let’s now move onto the comedy portion of today’s blog, better known these days as, “The Halladay and Favre Show.”

The Brett Favre thing really has become gone beyond the realm of ridiculous. On Friday ESPN—which continues to be a pretty good comedy act on its own—was actually reporting that Favre’s agent had told Rachel Nichols that Favre, “hadn’t yet made up his mind.” (Let me pause here to say that Rachel’s an old friend from her days at The Washington Post and I am not making fun of her, she’s just doing what she’s told by the Bristol Boys).

Here are some other things Favre’s agent could have told Rachel exclusively:

--Tomorrow is Saturday.

--July is likely to end next week.

--Barack Obama, in spite of Republican claims that he doesn’t exist, is still President.

Or, to quote my friend Bob Carpenter (play-by-play man on TV for the Washington Nationals) “hey, have you heard, Lou Gehrig hasn’t been feeling well lately.”

Does anyone at ESPN realize what a complete parody of itself the network has become? Hey, I have a scoop too: The Vikings open camp Thursday. Sources tell me Favre will either be there or he won’t be there.

The Halladay thing is different because it is truly an important story and because it is a moving target. Offers and counter-offers are being made every day and, unlike Favre, Halladay isn’t milking the story he’s just waiting like the rest of us for an outcome. (Maybe he should announce his retirement and then demand to be traded to Minnesota).

It does get to be a joke this time of year though when every baseball reporter alive is scrambling to report every possible rumor—knowing 90 percent of the time there’s nothing to it but also knowing they have bosses screaming for news. When SI.com’s Jon Heyman told a guy on WFAN in New York on Saturday that it was entirely possible neither the Mets or the Yankees would make a deal, you would have thought he had said the franchises were folding. Sensing that Heyman began going on about how the Yankees COULD try to get Jarrod Washburn or the Mets MIGHT try to move Pedro Feliciano, if only to prove that he wasn’t asleep at the wheel.

He wasn’t asleep at all. It just is hard to create news when there is none.

That doesn’t prevent people from trying. If half the trades floated as possibilities happened in late July, every team would be re-making its roster. The one interesting notion is that there will be more movement in August because teams strapped for money will be less likely to make claims on guys being put through waivers than in past years.

We’ll see if that proves true.

Meantime, the best line I heard all weekend didn’t come from one of the so-called baseball, ‘insiders,’ but from WFAN’s Steve Somers (I was up there this weekend and in the car a lot so I listened) who has been funnier and smarter than anyone in sports talk radio for more years than I can count.

“The magic number for the Mets,” Somers said, “is two thousand and ten.”

He’s got that right.

Assuming Lance Armstrong is ‘Clean’, A Brush with LeMond; Making an Impression on Ray Romano!

There are few athletes in the world I find more fascinating than Lance Armstrong. I was thinking that again this morning reading about his move into third place on the second day of The Tour de France.

I’ve always been amazed by what those who ride in The Tour do. I spent a number of years in Europe in the 80s and 90s while the race was going on and would watch the replays of the race each night after getting back to my hotel room. Consider this phrase: “In today’s 121 mile ride through the Pyrenees Mountains…” Most of us would be pretty tired DRIVING 121 miles through the mountains. These guys get on their bikes for something like 20 days out of 22 and ride about 2,000 miles up and down mountains in all sorts of weather conditions. They are amazing athletes.

Which is why, in another time, there would have been movies made about Armstrong. He’s written two very successful books, but there remains this shadow over him because anyone who has been on a bike in the last 15 years is automatically considered a drug-user by some, if not most. So many prominent riders have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs that when someone does what Armstrong has done—win the Tour seven straight years AFTER beating cancer—there are going to be raised eyebrows.

Part of this is, sorry Francophiles, the simple fact that the French simply can’t stand the idea that an American is dominating an event they consider part of their national heritage. Any story that casts Armstrong under any suspicion at all is treated in France as if it is gospel and absolute proof that Armstrong couldn’t possibly be clean.

I simply don’t know enough about any of this to know if he’s clean. I very much want to believe he’s clean because his story is absolutely astonishing and what he’s done to raise cancer awareness can NOT be sullied on any level by anyone. Too often in sports those we think of as Superman turn out to be Lex Luthor but I’m going to stick with the idea that Armstrong’s cape is clean until someone proves otherwise in a definitive way.

I almost wrote a book on the Tour de France once. As I said, I became fascinated with it while covering Wimbledon and The British Open for The Washington Post each summer and, at one point, came very close to riding (in a car) with Greg LeMond and his team during the race. I had lengthy phone conversations with LeMond and everything appeared to be in place. That, however, was the spring my mother died very suddenly and I had to cancel the idea to be around to help my father. As it turned out that was the year (1993) when LeMond got sick just before the race began and withdrew. So, it really wasn’t meant to be.

The brush with LeMond did lead to one of my more interesting encounters with a public figure. Several years later, I was at a party that CBS throws every year at The Masters. The network invites the media and flies in a lot of people from Hollywood for the week. I was at this party sitting with some friends when Lesley Anne Wade, CBS Sports’ longtime public relations director came over and said, “I am SO excited. Greg LeMond is at the party.”

My head snapped up. I had never actually met LeMond. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to him,” Lesley Anne said.

We walked across the room to a group of people, none of whom looked to me like LeMond. Lesley Anne introduced me to everyone—none of them named LeMond. “Where’s Greg LeMond?” I asked.

“Greg LeMond?” she said. “I didn’t say Greg LeMond was here, I said RAY ROMANO was here.”

“Ray Romano?” I said. “Who the hell is Ray Romano?”

“Me,” said the guy standing next to me.

Lesley Anne was now white as a sheet. “Ray Romano John,” she said. “You know, THE Ray Romano of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond?’

I had never watched the show, had no clue who Ray Romano was. I tried to recover. “Oh yeah, of course,” I said, shaking Romano’s reluctant hand. “Love the show.”

I thought Lesley Anne might faint.

Fast forward a year: same party. I was standing with a group of people when who should walk over but Ray Romano. Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports, grabbed Romano and said, “John have you ever met Ray Romano?”

“Very nice to see you,” I said, not wanting to say anything about the year before.

Romano pointed a finger at me. “I remember YOU,” he said.

Hey, at least I made an impression on him.