Statement from Jason Giambi
-
- June
- 21
Via the MLBPA:
“Today, I have agreed to Commissioner Selig’s request that I meet with Senator George Mitchell. In a direct conversation the Commissioner impressed upon me the idea that the game of baseball would be best served by such a meeting. I will continue to do what I think is right and be candid about my past history regarding steroids. I have never blamed anyone nor intended to deflect blame for my conduct. I alone am responsible for my actions and I apologize to the Commissioner, the owners and the players for any suggestion that they were responsible for my behavior.
“I’ve come to this decision for a number of reasons. I did not want to put my family through a lengthy legal challenge in support of my position. In addition, the uncertainty of my playing status could detract from the efforts of our team to win the American League East. My focus at this time needs to be on rehabbing my injury, getting back on the field, and contributing to the goals of my team. To be embroiled in a legal battle could undermine all of this and I would never put my family, my teammates, or the Yankees in that position.
“Accordingly, I have agreed to this meeting. As I have always done, I will address my own personal history regarding steroids. I will not discuss in any fashion any other individual. My hope is that this meeting will serve as a positive step, as all parties involved seek the best approach in dealing with the issue of “drugs in sport.â€? That has always been the intent behind all of the comments I have made on the subject and it remains so to this day.â€?
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on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 5:13 pm by Peter Abraham.
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Peter Abraham
Cheater
hopefully Giambi is back with the Yankees soon, what do u think about the Yankees maybe going after Milton Bradley? Pete?
Giambi is going to be the fall guy because he was the only one to admit to anything. Meanwhile Sosa reached 600 and Bonds is close to Aaron.
Hey Giambi
‘Know what you can do to help the Yankees?
Accept a trade/ drop your no-trade clause, not that anyone would take you, cuz if you think you’re coming back to help the 2008 Yankees since you’re most likely done for this year, you are just Carl Pavano II.
Accept a $17M buyout after this year so the Yanks can clear $9M and themselves of you, an embarassment and disgrace to the Yankee pinstripes with your cheating. I’m sure the Angels, A’s, or Mariners would be dumb enough to sign you for a year and $9M to be their DH so you can still steal $26M for next year.
If you refuse a buyout, the Yankees should keep you on the d.l. ‘til you ROT and are no longer viable after ‘08 (good luck getting your big payday after ‘09 sitting out from since early this year through 2008).
Unless he can hit or pitch, what he says or does is meaningless to me.
When he can play baseball again is the only thing that interests me.
yes he is a cheater with about 400 other guys who haven’t even remotely admitted to it.
who gives a crap…thye cheated big suprise wow…
the Yanks in this series have done nothing right; no clutch hitting(none), bad baserunning, and decent pitching…
the offense is in a coma again…
Here’s what I’d do to you after 2007 if I was George Steinbrenner:
1. Publicly call you an embarassment and a disgrace to the Yankees thus someone I want out of Yankee pinstripes and don’t ever want to see or talk to again.
2. Put you on waivers and see who takes you. ‘Doubt anyone would but who knows?
3. Offer you and $20M of your $26M to anyone.
4. If you refuse a trade, play you so hard in spring training, you go on the d.l. (you’ll probably get hurt running down the 1B line) and we keep you there ‘til you rot, activate you on 8/31, then release you 9/1 so no one who signs you would/ could add you to their postseason roster. Who’d sign you so you could jump on a postseason train anyway?
Michael Kay just read a press release by bud selig’s office about giambi’s “cooperation” with the investigation… it is by far the most insulting statement i’ve ever heard. Selig tries to make it sound like Giambi’s “full cooperation” was 1) not coerced by the threat of a suspension 2) is going to add value to the investigation (cause all the questions and answers havent been pre-scripted) and 3) that the investigation itself will be of value.
I really wish just one sports writer/reporter would actually try to interview him and push back on his statement. Explain to Selig that the public isn’t buying and nobody believes any of this.
Why hasn’t anybody tried to push back and show how absurd Selig and his “investigation” is.. Its seems all the mass media (Fox, ESPN, etc.) continue to play this game Selig is playing
Money For Nothing
Great Story on Ex Yankees pitcher Carl “Who” Pavano
[quote]
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=pavano
Yeah, you posted the same crap yesterday Go Away Giambi and it was shown then why it was nonsense.
Try coming up with new material.
the rockies are making all the plays this series and the Yanks are not.. simple…....
melky missed a double by a foot that is the game… avg with RISP for the Yanks this series is horrible and the for the rocks it is good….
Jason Giambi is a decent person and I hope this works out okay for him, but he needs to rely on his lawyers and the MLBPA because he is swimming with the sharks.
Can’t the Yanks just try to buyout what’s left of Giambi’s contract? Heck, they basically gave Pavano $40MM for nothing…Why not do the same with Giambi? At least they would get something for their money this time (Giambi will no longer darken the Yankee clubhouse and disgrace the Yankee uniform.)
“Jason Giambi is a decent person”
Yes, as a person he seems like a nice, jovial sort of fellow, but as a ballplayer he is a complete fraud (and the Yanks signed him to be a ballplayer, not a nice guy).
They can try it but he doesn’t have to accept it.
Rarely does the Players Association allow for buyouts because it sets the precedent that teams can pay guys less than the contractual figure.
Its not like other sports when it comes to buyouts. The Union is pretty strict on this.
Its how Arod became a Yankee, when the PA didn’t allow a buyout for Arod to go to Boston.
Rodger Dodger:
Using PEDs is wrong and yeah he got caught. So I’m not defending what Giambi did and I recognize that he didn’t come forward because his conscience was bothering him. And this statement doesn’t undo the past.
But now that Giambi finds himself in this position, it is worthy of notice that he has apologized, taken full personal responsibility and also agreed to tell the truth both in the Grand Jury and to the Commissioner’s chief investigator.
Ahhhh SJ 44 shows his true colors as the win by any means necessary worm he is who could care less that if the Yankees win the World Series with Giambi on the World Series roster, that World Series will forever have an asterisk called “won the World Series with an admitted cheater.”
I guess you welcome a cheater back with open arms then huh? I don’t, and that makes me a true Yankee fan unlike you who only cares about what a guy does and not how he does it. The ends justifies the means for you huh? We’ll never know if the 2003 Yankees made it to the World Series without Giambi taking steroids. Chances are he took them. If people are gonna say Bonds took ‘em for years and years and years including 2003, well then, we have to say Giambi did since he’s publicly admitted it. Giambi a roidsboy in ‘03: why not? He had the legal roidsboy and illegal roidsboy cheater Mark McGwire as a teammate and close friend for years after he left Oakland, so I wouldn’t be suprised if (Giambi) started in with the roids in 1999-2000, or 2001 to live up to the contract he got from the Yanks which has been a bust (no consistency).
Seriously, go get a sense of morals and ethics then a life.
newsflash giambi did not get caught….
he tested positive to nothing…why do we talk about this garbage who cares, the owners knew about all this garbage they loved it especially at the turnstiles.. for you 12 yr olds sosa and mcgwire had a HR race a few yrs ago supposively it reinvigerated baseball.
Milton Bradley was DFA, he is worth a chance pick up, what do you all think??
A 10 year old punk, who is on his 50th screen name in a blog is giving me ethics lessons?
Take your meds and tell mommy your computer time is up for the day.
Come back tomorrow with more words of wisdom.
Don’t touch Bradley with a ten-foot pole! The guy is pure trouble, and guaranteed poison in the clubhouse. Heck, he couldn’t fit in with the A’s…a team filled with young, easy-going guys and a team that doesn’t suffer under the media microscope that the Yanks do. You think Randy Johnson seemed ornery in New York? Bradley would make Johnson look like Mother Theresa!
Yeah he doesn’t have to accept it, but if he wants to ever play another Yankee game and possibly another M.L.B. again, he will, cuz the Yanks can keep him on the d.l.’til he rots and that’s lost $$$$$$$$. The PA can’t order the Yanks to play him if he’s hurt. Let them prove he can play and what’s it to them and him? He’s getting paid for nothing.
Since when does the PA have the authority to prohibit a buyout? I mean do you have a shred of a concept of what Giambi has done? He has publicly admitted he is a cheater and if talking to some guy about what he did means he isn’t one, I don’t know what is. How could the 2008 Yankees have an admitted cheater on their team, win the World Series, and not have that W.S. forever tainted? You think the Yanks want that, you’re nuts. He will not be in a Yankee uniform next year and if he is, this team is lower than they were in 1989-93 cuz at least then they didn’t have enough talent to win. An admitted cheater on the Yankees after he announced he’s one in so many words would be a travesty.
You know what I think sucks? The only guy to be honest (eventually) about his use is the guy who ends up taking the blame for actions an entire industry implicitly sanctioned, while guys who deny, deny, deny manage to skirt the limelight.
It’s sad that we consider Giambi’s speaking out to be “dumb,” when it seems he’s one of the only guys out there willing to part the curtains.
Mike,
Absolutely, Giambi has done more to rid baseball of dangerous drugs than anyone. Selig and the owners are only interested in covering their backs and protecting their bank accounts. It’s hard to be a just person in an unjust world.
The Players Association, like MLB, has to approve every congtract that is signed. That’s part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The Players Association has EVERY right to negate a buyout because the precedent is not only not part of the CBA, it affects every one of their members.
They don’t want to set the precedent of contracts being bought out because it lowers the value of the contracts AND gives the owners an out when they want to get rid of somebody.
If you are going to make suggestions, understand how the Collective Bargaining process works and learn the rules the players and owners have to abide by.
You will save yourself a lot of time making suggestions that have no legal basis of passing muster.
Just cut your losses with this guy already and move on.
Stuart:
You wrote: “newsflash giambi did not get caught….”
Uh, Stu, when you get called into the Grand Jury to testify that you did indeed illegally use and/or possess performance enhancing drugs in connection with a criminal investigation of the sale and possession of illegal PEDs, trust me when I tell you that this is called “being caught.”
Go Away Giambi:
I understand not liking Giambi either personally or professionally and wishing there was a way to get rid of him and I appreciate your creativity and passion about getting rid of Giambi. But based on your comments I don’t get the impression you really understand the way a guaranteed contract works in MLB. More to the point, I don’t get your snotty attitude toward long time blog contributors who actually know what they are talking about.
Why not try a little humility and consider that you might be wrong before you start the character slam.
Really the only breaking news in this is that finally giambi has admitted what he has done and used the word steroids rather than that stuff. You do have to feel badly for him as he is a nice guy who did a bad thing and got caught. I am sure there are many others who did the same who we don’t know about and wouldn’t even think about. My only other problem with his statement is the goal is to win the world series not the al east
Also if Giambi becomes healthy he can force the issue of being activated.Go away go away Giambi.I look foward to Jason coming back healthy and I would like to see him retite as a Yankee in 5-6 years albeit at half his present salary.
Anyone want to take bets that, that statement was written by MLB.
Now I wonder what if anything the Yankees can do with that statement. He pretty much admitted to doing steriods (not that, that should be a shock). Do they have a legal leg to stand on?
Admitting to using steroids is one thing, when did he do them? While with the Yankees or before?
If he was doing them while with the Yankees and it can be proven, then they have a weak case. If not, then no case.
You all think steroids are a joke? Several states are now testing high school athletes for steroids. What does that say about our ‘sports culture’?
Annie, I went to high school in the early 90’s in South Jersey and around the same time they started bringing drug sniffing dogs through the hallways and would search any locker the dogs would react to. Apparantly, our school’s biggest drug problem was steroids. Not weed, crack, heroine, or LSD. Of course this was just what they found in student lockers, however.
Testing has been long overdue.
Pay him $20M to go away? What planet do you live on? Giambi the ballplayer is still immensely valuable – way more valuable than the $6M difference. Sure, he’s not worth $26M, but what can you do? Suck it up, pay him, and enjoy having a great, albeit overpayed, hitter on your team.
jason hang in there i belive in you …...
go yankees