At 24 years old and coming off the best season off his young career, Parque tore the labrum in his throwing shoulder and never recovered. After two years of fruitless therapy and desperate to get his fastball back, he ordered some human growth hormone (yes, he's in the Mitchell Report), took a couple of injections, and then gave up. He retired in 2003, pitching only 70 innings in his final three seasons.

Apparently, the torment of those dark days have been eating away at him ever since. He painstakingly tries to explain himself. He had kids to feed! He was so young! He's just a man! You know what? We get it, Jim. You were desperate to rebuild your career and, yes, almost anyone of us would have done the same. No one is mad at you, buddy.

But let's say for a moment that Parque hadn't freaked out and stopped taking the drug. What if he had continued using HGH and it made him a serviceable pitcher for five more years or so? He makes a couple million dollars, his family is more financially stable, the White Sox get a fourth starter, and no one is the wiser. I know the "steroids = cheating" crowd won't appreciate this, but ... so what if he did?

Here's Jim own words about it:

HGH was not banned by Major League Baseball when I ordered it. It was controversial and unethical, but it was not banned.

[...]

I had done just enough research to know that what I was about to do had huge risks. Because I did not obtain the drugsfrom a lab, they could be tainted or entirely different than what I ordered. I was uncomfortable, but I injected the substance about six times. It immediately made me sleep deeper. My skin became baby-soft, and I could feel my workouts improving. It never gave me more strength or bulked me up, but it provided quicker recoveries. I began to throw harder because my shoulder felt no pain. I was able to withstand more throwing, creating a work environment that I had not experienced in two years.

So basically ... he took a drug and it made him feel better. He suffered an injury and this helped him get over it. What is wrong with that? How is that any worse than a player who takes aspirin for a headache or vicodin for a sore back or a shot of anesthetic to numb a foot injury or having a surgeon temporarily alter your peroneus brevis tendon so that you can become an American hero? Aren't those things just as "performance enhancing" (maybe more so) as Parque's baby soft skin? All convincing explanations accepted below, but you'll have to work pretty hard to invent one.

It's true that we don't know a lot about HGH and its effects on the body, but every drug that's ever been manufactured started out that way. There's little evidence that it actually makes you bigger or stronger and it doesn't add any drop to your curveball. Maybe if athletes were allowed to use it, supervised correctly, we might learn what it can really do. And maybe more pitchers like Parque wouldn't have to retire at age 27.

Ex-Sox pitcher Jim Parque confesses: Why I juiced [Sun-Times]

A federal criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court today, charging Tejada with "Misrepresentations to Congress" which is apparently frowned upon. The six-page indictmentinformation, which you can read below, basically says that the findings in the Mitchell Report contradict what Tejada told Congressional staffers during an interview conducted when they were investigating the steroids in baseball matter. Legally, that's the same thing as lying to Abraham Lincoln's ghost, so you can imagine how much trouble he's in. Tejada is due in court, in Washington, tomorrow morning.

This marks yet another athlete who will be put on trial not for using, buying, or selling steroids—but for lying about it to important people. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Tejada Charged With Lying to Investigators [Washington Post]

Update: According to some people who think they're better than me because of their fancy degrees, this is not an actual indictment, but merely a statement of the charges. Also, Tejada has reportedly reached a agreement with prosecutors and will plead guilty.

Radomski, who testified in Washington D.C. last week for the Clemens perjury case, said there's no doubt in his mind that The Rocket is delusional. He tells Jeremy Schapp in an upcoming "Outside The Lines" interview that he personally shipped HGH to Clemens home in Houston and his only regret is that his friend, Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee, is mixed up in this messy melodrama. And he's furious that Clemens is treating McNamee like this opportunistic hanger-on:

"If Brian was such a bad person why did Andy Pettitte back him? Why did Chuck Knoblauch back him? You let a guy you don't trust and you don't respect stay in your house, and be around your family. And be around your kids.[H]e admits his wife got a shot [of human growth hormone] in the bedroom. Think about this, he let someone go in a bedroom with his wife and inject his wife. And you didn't trust the guy? If he didn't trust the guy, he would have knocked the guy out. That would have been it. But he let him do it. What does that tell you?"

That Roger Clemens doesn't mind others looking at his wife's ass, considering he's had so many other affairs throughout their marriage? It's only fair.

I believe Brian McNamee, Not Roger Clemens [ESPN]

Apparently, Gammons played at a charity concert the other night and performed a song he wrote about the Mitchell Report and steroids. A tasty excerpt:

Then one day I got a call from Mitchell's henchmen
Seems my name showed up where it shouldn't have been
Now I'm back at the Wal-Mart working midnight to nine
Playing beer league softball in lieu of ten years time
In lieu of ten years time

The Steroid Blues! We love it. Also at the concert: Bronson Arroyo, who took the opportunity to once again beg his way back to Boston. Reds fans have to just love that.

The Mitchell Report Song [Boston.com]
Dear Boston, I Miss You [Bostonist]

Our immediate observations, mostly of a hopefully amusing nature:

• He has a few weird facial ticks, and stumbles a lot, which is odd, considering the video is edited and could have been re-filmed.

• Thankfully, he doesn't have the streaks in his hair anymore.

• He's appropriately forceful and unequivocal, we think, and it's worth pointing out, like he does, that the Los Angeles Times story from last year about his appearance in the Jason Grimsley document, the one he vehemently denied, turned out to be false after all. He's denying even more fiercely here.

• Our favorite mental image, by far, is of one of Roger's children attempting to teach him how to use YouTube. WRClemens, "age 45," just joined on Saturday, and this is the only video. We're fairly certain this is the first time Clemens has ever heard of YouTube, and he's probably spent the last 48 hours getting caught up on Peanut Butter Jelly Time, the Star Wars kid and all the other Internet memes of the last five years. It's probably been a fun few days.

They call it the steroids social network. It's a good thing the graphic is well done, because I absolutely loathe the term "social network" and the concepts therein. If I cared what your interests were, I would hang out with you and discover them using actual social skills. That picture of you not looking at the camera doesn't make me believe you don't really care about having your picture taken, considering that I can see your arm holding the camera. And no, you're not my friend just because you found my listing online. Unless, of course, you're a fan of my work. Then let's do lunch sometime!

But the Radomski Social Network graph is broken up into "crews." So we have the "Brian McNamee Crew" (Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch) and the "David Segui Crew" (Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts), and so on. Chris Donnels has his own crew. As pissed as he must be that he was outed by Radomski, he has to feel honored to have his own crew.

Oddly enough, the player with the most degrees of separation from the center was one of the bombshell names, Miguel Tejada. He was referred by Adam Piatt, who was referred by F.P. Santangelo, who heard about his services from David Segui. Going the opposite direction, Tejada played in the 2002 All-Star game, whose broadcast had a "memorable moments" segment that was emceed by Ray Liotta, who appeared in the telecast of the 58th Annual Emmy Awards with Kevin Bacon.

The Steroids Social Network [Slate]

Actually, we're not sure something so unfocused can be classified as a "rant." Our favorite thing about Schilling's blog is that he often seems to forget the point of a sentence by the time he gets to the end of it. As for the names on the list, and Lord knows there's no shortage of those, I have feelings very strongly in some cases due to personal history, and opinions in many others. I've played, roomed and lived with some of these guys, and competed and gotten to know others. Wait ... what does that mean?

This stylistic "quirk" doesn't work well when discussing an issue as complicated as the Mitchell Report, which somehow just makes it more perfect. The "news" out of Schilling's post is that he called for Roger Clemens to give back his Cy Young awards. When you read the whole post, we guess he said that, but this was just a few words after saying, "my thought is that Roger will find a way in short order to organize a legal team to guarantee a retraction of the allegations made." Trying to strip a usable quote out of a Schilling blog post is a fool's errand.

That didn't make the post any less enjoyable than all of Schilling's posts. If your eyes are still in your head when you reach the end.

One Player's Take On The Mitchell Report [38 Pitches]

Hey, whatever works.

"You know, to be honest, I probably should stay away from it, so I'll have no comment, but to me I don't think it's really an issue. You know, all this stuff that's been going on for the last three years, the probing [of] guys, doing this and that, it's the kind of thing—Ooh, whoa, I'm driving, I almost got hit by a car!"

We have no better joke than Dan Steinberg's: "Upon receiving a follow-up question, Lo Duca did not change the topic by claiming he was in the middle of an asteroid attack."

Paul LoDuca Says Get Over It [DC Sports Bog]

Our question: Is this T-shirt more valuable now, or less?

How delicious, then, that the pound of flesh belonged to Roger Clemens! Perhaps the most universally loathed baseball player — A-Rod has decades to go to catch up, and one senses his problem is more that he's kind of dopey, rather than a dick like Clemens — has finally gotten the comeuppance many wished upon him. Hating Roger Clemens: It's not just for baseball fans anymore!

As Stark points out, the evidence against Clemens is essentially he said/he said, but, frankly ... WHO CARES? The Mitchell Report was gonna nail someone to the wall and ruin their reputation forever. And it turned out to be Roger Clemens! Bad day for baseball? What? Says who?

Many Legacies Will Be Tarnished Forever [ESPN]

Well, perhaps not, but we've devoured pretty much the whole thing — it's a quick read — and we can say with 100 percent certainty that we are no closer to the truth about steroids in Major League Baseball over the last 20 years than we were this morning. (The Sporting Blog states this in the plainest, most eloquent way possible.) Bud Selig gave his press conference of empty platitudes, Suzyn Waldman stopped touching herself (as Drew memorably put it), Theo Epstein took a couple of hits and we all got to titter and speculate for a while. (And we got to see Jose Canseco kicked out of the press conference.)

But honestly: This is what MLB paid $20 million for? This took nearly two years? Essentially, Sen. Mitchell has two sources, a bunch of media reports, Jose Canseco's book and every player in baseball (save two) ignoring his requests to talk. The only reason Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are in here is because they were unfortunate enough to have acquaintances who had no choice but to talk. The report has brought us no closer, because nothing possibly could. We don't think this is going to bring us any closure, because the report is so obviously not comprehensive.

Everyone wants us to move on. That's fine with us; we've been wanting to do that for a while anyway. But the people in this document are guilty scapegoats; they're the unlucky folks who got caught. (Kind of.) Is that enough to discontinue suspicion of everyone? They hope so. We highly doubt it.

(Huge, huge thanks to Greg Lindsay, Noah Robischon and Matt Sussman for their help today. Now, we're gonna go sleep for a few days.)

To us, this is the most amazing section of the whole Mitchell Report. Essentially, Dr. Robert Millman, the medical director of MLB, told a doctor who had criticized Mark McGwire's use of andro that "everyone in baseball is irritated with you" and "if you don't shut up, they're going to sue you.

And that's not all. Another great section:

Bill Stoneman, who retired in 2007 as the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, had a similar recollection of a presentation by Drs. Millman and Solomon. He remembered wondering at the time why Major League Baseball had permitted the presentation, which to his recollection included the assertion that there was no evidence that anabolic steroids were bad for you. He said that the baseball executives in attendance were universally frustrated with the message of leniency that was being conveyed.

That's pretty amazing.

The Baltimore Orioles traded Miguel Tejada to the Houston Astros yesterday. Their timing was impeccable.

Ladies and gentleman, we present you with Giants general manager Brian Sabean, the direct polar opposite of a whistleblower.

This is a personal one, so forgive us, but here's where Sen. Mitchell came down on Rick Ankiel.

Here's some really gruesome descriptions of "future Hall of Famer" Roger Clemens being injected with steroids.

First, here's the memo from the MLBPAA telling them not to cooperate with the Mitchell Investigation.

Here's the letter Paul LoDuca send to Kirk Radomski after getting a returned check.