Michael Schmidt Re: Sosa – Nothing Really Shocks You Anymore
June 18, 2009 – 1:10 pm by Tas MelasNo one would have been surprised if you told them Slammin’ Sammy Sosa was juicing it when he was going home run for home run with Mark McGwire. If the news came out then, there would have been an outrage, I’m sure people would have called for a year long suspension and even lifetime banishment. Fans would have all felt cheated after getting their emotions involved with such a thrilling stretch of baseball highlights. The fact that the news was leaked this week in the New York Times, several years after the fact, much like Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro, really reduces the cries of baseball followers. Major League Baseball has definitely cleaned up its steroid policy since, and this Sosa story isn’t hitting home with new fans of the game, but it’s just another guy who cheated to those of us who were loving every minute of the drama back then. The writer for that New York Times article, Michael Schmidt, joined WSCR to discuss how Sosa’s big name helped him get the details on the MLB ‘positive’ list, if certain players taking performance enhancements would surprise him, and how comfortable he is with the research.
How he uncovered the story:
“I can’t really get into the details around it. We have been looking at the 2003 tests for some time. I think that Sosa’s story made my job here a little bit easier, that’s what I will say.”
His comfort level with the research:
“We put an enormous amount of time and effort into this. Whenever you’re writing something like this, it’s very serious and you go to extreme lengths and we felt comfortable with it and that’s how we got ourselves to where we are today.”
How he ended up on the story:
“I normally cover performance enhancing drugs in sports and mainly focus on baseball. Everywhere I go, especially since the A-Rod story, the one thing people always ask me is, ‘When’s that list going to come out? Why haven’t we heard about that list?’… I eventually came to the conclusion that this is what the readers really wanted and I wasn’t really going after it. I was kind of sitting back and not doing anything. I sort of devised a strategy to sort of go after it. I said I’m not being true to the readers or really giving an effort if I don’t go after it myself. So, I came up with a strategy and tried to do it. I’ll never get the list I don’t think but I figured if I talked to enough people that the bigger people would stand out. Sosa being a bigger name stuck out and I was able to get that. But it’s the one thing that I always get asked about, the list.”
If any player using steroids would surprise him:
“In what I’ve seen in my few years of covering, a lot of unexpected things happen. Manny Ramirez being suspended this year in a time of a lot of drug testing is pretty surprising. You see things that are very unexpected sometimes, that’s just sort of what happens. There’s a few guys who I wouldn’t say that I would be shocked by, but nothing really shocks you anymore.”
Listen to Mike Schmidt on 670 The Score in Chicago with Mully and Hanley
Tags: Baseball, Major League Baseball, Mike Schmidt, MLB, Performance Enhancing Steroids, Sammy Sosa
