And the Mets have a chance to put a hurting on the Phillies. If they sweep the Phillies at the Bank, the lead in the division becomes 9.5 games... in mid-June! The Mets already have ten game leads against perennial nemesis Atlanta and last year's upstart Nationals. The Marlins are even further smoked.
I'll give credit to Willie and Omar for putting this team together for winning. It can pitch, it can hit and most importantly it can win. But the Mets' dominance over the NL has been overshadowed by a much darker tale.
Jason Grimsley is a rat and people hate him for it. In an attempt to save his own skin, Grimsley sold out some of the steroid users he knew. But instead of the names coming out quickly, like those in the BALCO scandal, and users just coming clean like Jim Leyritz, Grimsley's affadavit had hidden names. Special Agent Jeff Novitzky's black pen caused more controversy in baseball this week than Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi put together. Because the speculation kills.
On Thursday, the excellent blog Deadspin released a story naming names from the affadavit. The story cited an anonymous source who named Albert Pujols' personal trainer Chris Mihlfield as one of the redacted names. I always thought Big Al was a juicer, and at first I thought this was vindication. Finally, there's evidence. And what a coincidence as Albert Pujols went down with a freak injury, nothing more than a strained muscle, a few days before the storm came. He went on the DL immediately and vanished. Was he faking it because he didn't want to take the heat?
But as Mihlfield denied his presence in the affadavit after allegedly receiving confirmation from Grimsley and Grimsley's lawyer, I wondered if Pujols got a fair shot. Here was this player who drew so much steroid suspicion in an era where baseball can't test for HGH and conducts private testing and arbitration for performance enhancing drugs. This time, though, the problem of speculation took over. There's no evidence saying any of this is true.
Albert Pujols is not necessarily a steroid user and he is not necessarily clean. Jason Grimsley, to my knowledge, has suggested exactly that in his affadavit by silence. The Grim One and Pujols only shared a trainer.
So, for now, forget the speculation. Let's play ball with the greatest club in the NL and one of the best Mets teams in recent memory to this point.
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Ambitious? Yes... but you'll join me anyway, won't you?
--schuyla.
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