They say the wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind they do. Today Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets clubhouse employee has admitted to providing dozens of current and former major league players with anabolic steroids, human growth hormone (HGH), and amphetamines.
Radomski has cut a deal with prosecutors to save himself from up to 25 years in jail and a half million dollars in fines for distributing controlled substances and money laundering.
Although it may appear that little progress has been made in investigations into baseball and steroids, you begin to see a pattern emerging. It looks like the MLB investigation, lead by ex-senator George Mitchell, has been pushed to the sidelines because federal agents are in the process of rolling up distributors and users. Dominoes are falling now with some regularity.
The same prosecutors who got guilty pleas from the co-founder of Balco and from Barry Bonds personal trainer snared Radomski. After the Balco pleas they also moved against ex-Diamondbacks reliever Ross Grimsley, who is reported to have named names of players who used performance enhancing drugs. Now we have Radomski, who has pledged to cooperate in naming his clients.
There are some interesting items in the Radomski's plea agreement:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0427073roids1.html
His clients, unnamed, are from multiple teams and not just the Mets. Some he met, some he did business with by phone, some wrote him checks. It's safe to assume prosectors have those checks and phone records.
Then there is this. The focus of the investigation of Radomski appears to be two specific shipments to a client or clients in the Northern District of California Federal Court jurisdiction. In December of 2005 he sent two vials of decadurabolin and two vials of testosterone, both anabolic steroids, to a customer in San Jose, California. In January of that same year, he deposited a check he admits was payment for anabolic steroids from a customer who resides in the court's area of jurisdiction.
Where is the investigation headed? You have to figure that any number of Radomski's clients from his ten years with the Mets are going to be confronted with the same choice Ross Grimsley faced, which is cooperation or prosecution. And these persistent prosecutors seem to have their sights set not just on all the users who fall into their net, but one in particular.
It may be sunny where your team plays tomorrow, but clouds are starting to form over baseball. Clouds that look much closer today to bringing rain.
MVP