White Noise

The political grandstanding continued in Washington yesterday as senator John McCain took center stage in the steroid story. Gentlemen, start your soapboxes (Reggie Jax goes to Washington). What, is this an election year or something? Selena Roberts files a report in the New York Times today. Over at Baseball Musings, David Pinto notes:

I have a feeling this is all theater. The Senate has better things to do than worry about steroids in baseball.

In a second post, Pinto continues:

I don't think it's clear that the union has no desire to fix this issue. The union is run by very smart men, who I suspect understand the steroid issue much better than the Senators questioning them. They understand that tests consist of false positives and false negatives, as well as real results. That's why players are only being reprimanded after long term failures, and why the players privacy is protected. The program they put in place may not be intrusive enough for a lot of people, but I think that the fact that 5 to 7% came up positive instead of the 70% that some people speculated about means that testing may be working.

At the same time, the New York papers are filled with the kind of non-story that drives Lee Sinins and Joe Sheehan bananas. Gary Sheffield was upset with the way the Yankees handled his recent thumb injury. He then told reporters just how bothered he was by it. Yankee general manager Brian Cashman then met with Sheffield for twenty minutes and they smoothed everything over. End of report, good night.