Interesting News Day

[TLAK]

Agents seize drug-test samples

From todays Sun-Times:

Federal authorities probing an alleged steroid distribution ring have seized the results and samples of drug tests on selected major league baseball players from a drug-testing lab, a spokesman for the lab said Friday.

 

Internal Revenue Service agents served a search warrant to obtain ''documentation and specimens'' from a Quest Diagnostics lab in Las Vegas, Quest spokesman Gary Samuels said.

 

Samuels would not say whether IRS agents took the drug-test results or specimen of Barry Bonds, but said the agents took materials consistent with a federal subpoena that had sought test results and specimens from the San Francisco Giants' slugger and fewer than a dozen other players. Among them were New York Yankees Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi.

 

The raid occurred Thursday, shortly after the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a motion in a San Francisco court seeking to quash that subpoena.

 

IRS spokesman Mark Lessler and U.S. Attorney's spokeswoman Ji-Yon Yi both said Friday they could not comment.

 

--- I'm no fan of Barry Bonds* but I wish the Federal law enforcement people would show the same vigor and relentlessness in pursuing Bin-Laden. Perhaps if Barry's family had been business partners with George Bush we would not be hearing about this.

 

Jerry Reinsdorf

From the Washington Post, Mar 19:

Deputy Mayor Eric Price held up a chart of MLB's last 11 stadium mega-deals, and suggested to the committee that the proper mix had settled at about two-thirds public funding to one-third private -- a deal that would cost the District more than $250 million but also would cost MLB more than $100 million.

 

The reply came with a smile from the committee chairman, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, but it was not taken as a joke.

 

"Two-thirds/one-third is fine," Reinsdorf said, according to two people present. "But three thirds/no thirds is more of what we had in mind."

 

From todays Sun-Times:

NOTES: Washington D.C. officials have prepared a new plan they say offers Major League Baseball exactly what it has requested -- 100 percent public financing for a new ballpark if the Expos are moved to the nation's capital.

 

--- A new twist on owners extorting deals from the taxpayers, rather than build it or I'll move its build it or I won't move.

 

Leon Lee hit by exposure charge

From todays Sun-Times:

Leon Lee, father of Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee, resigned as manager of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the New York Mets' Class A affiliate, after being arrested on two counts of indecent exposure.

 

According to Deputy Debra Wesley of the St. Lucie County (Fla.) sheriff's department, Lee turned himself in Wednesday after posting a $1,000 bond for each count of exposing a sexual organ.

 

The incidents allegedly took place in Port St. Lucie, though it is not known when they happened, the New York Post reported.

 

Leon Lee was the Cubs' Pacific Rim scout from 1998-2002 and signed Hee Seop Choi.

 

Lee, who managed the Orix Blue Wave last season in the Japanese League, was hired by the Mets last month. The team declined to comment.

 

--- Has to be a big shock and distraction to the Grubs latest savior.