This morning, steroids returned to the front pages of the news with the Miami New Times report about Yankee star Alex Rodriguez and a host of other baseball players who were allegedly sold performance-enhancing drugs from a Florida clinic. While A-Rod deals with this latest embarrassment, Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis has been accused of taking deer-antler spray to give him a competitive advantage. Sports Illustrated described it as a "natural, anabolic hormone that stimulates muscle growth," and it was reportedly used by Lewis to recover from a triceps injury that occurred during the season.
My favorite reaction to all of this came this morning from ESPN radio talk-show host Mike Greenberg, who said that with the Super Bowl just five days away, this is "the last thing" anyone in New Orleans wanted to talk about. Maybe, but it seems to me that most sports writers and sportscasters LOVE talking about steroids. But more importantly, who knew that deer-antler spray had medicinal elements to it?
Speaking of baseball, yesterday, Stu Sternberg and the rest of the Tampa Bay Rays management team made the trek over to Court Street in Clearwater to talk to the Pinellas County Commission about their frustrations with St. Pete Mayor Bill Foster. That wasn't what they explicitly said, but that's what lies underneath the surface noise in this battle of wills. Foster invited Rays management to talk Thursday morning, but really, what do they have to say to each other? Sternberg wants to talk to folks in Tampa, and Foster doesn't.
For the first time in 2013, I saw Mayor Bob Buckhorn yesterday in Sulphur Springs where the mayor donned a hardhat and began demolishing a condemned home.
And the race for a new chair for the Florid Democratic Party is over, but the bitterness lingers ...
