More Balco Fallout: There is a question that I have not addressed yet, but is of the highest importance: Where did these transcripts come from? Grand jury transcripts, including this one, are sealed and confidential. Leaking them is a felony in most cases. This article states that only a select number of people had access to the transcripts: the judge and clerks, the defense attorneys and the government attorneys. Someone in that group, or an employee of one of these people, leaked this to the San Francisco Chronicle. I hope that this person is discovered and prosecuted, because if individuals are not confident that their sealed testimony will remain a secret, many will be much less willing to be forthcoming during these very important grand jury hearings.



And as expected, the negative publicity surrounding baseball (and all professional sports) continues to grow. This columnist states what many believe: of course there is cheating going on, but no one really seems to care about it.

While the spotlight shines on a few trespassers — such as baseball slugger Jason Giambi and sprinter Kelli White by admission, and superstar Barry Bonds and track queen Marion Jones by implication — hundreds more are sneaking under the fence.



If a guy like Conte, whose medical training consisted of copying articles about minerals from a Stanford library, can come up with substances that beat drug tests, then what about the true lab whizzes?



*****



It's sad, but you almost have to assume negatives. Charles Yesalis, the Penn State professor and author of three books on steroid use in sports, once asked me how I could believe football players could grow so large so fast in college, considering they already came to campus as the best physical specimens from high school. In other words, it's not natural. And at the highest level of competition, being naturally gifted isn't enough. You wonder if the best can get better without a little artificial assistance.

I really want to believe that athletes such as Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds (both of whom the columnist mentions) are not taking illegal drugs, and that they get their greatness from superior training, mental toughness and skills that cannot be supplemented. After all, Babe Ruth was an athlete far superior to any of his peers; there has never widespread speculation that the Bambino took steroids. It is possible that we are looking at a few once-in-a-generation athletes surrounded by others that take performance-enhancing drugs. But is it likely? Unfortunately, it seems to be growing less and less so.

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