"Major League Baseball tried to hush me up" - Gary Sheffield opens up about league's reaction to him bringing up conversations about steroids
Former Detroit Tigers ace Gary Sheffield was included in the Mitchell report with respect to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Mitchell was appointed during a period of controversy surrounding the 2006 book Game of Shadows by San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. It follows baseball superstars Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi's alleged extensive use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Recently on Foul Territory, Sheffield opened up about the league's reaction to his bringing up conversations about steroids. Sheffield said that he was the first one to bring up the steroid situation in the league and also added how the league was trying to remove him out of there.
"I was the first guy to bring up the steroid situation because I had a problem with it because I felt like they were taking MVPs away from me," Sheffield said.
"I had a personal problem with it because I know for a fact and I did the Brian Gumble special when I was with the LA Dodgers, and I trained like you wouldn't believe in the off-season and I was still hitting 30 and 40 home runs a year."
"Now he has 150 home runs more than me that's impossible, and so that's when I said that, but then once I started speaking like that. Major League Baseball tried to hush me up."
It's not sure who Gary Sheffield was pointing to when he was trying to pinpoint a certain major-league hitter, for whom he had doubts about using steroids.
Gary Sheffield feels that that the league wanted him out a long time ago
Gary Sheffield also mentioned how then MLB Commissioner Bud Selig confronted him to stop with the steroid stuff, which was negatively affecting the game.
"Bud Seely called me in the office and told me to stop it with this steroid stuff because I'm drawing too much attention to the game in a negative way," Sheffield said.
"If I'm drawing too much negative attention, why don't you investigate? You know it's I'm a player so I have a union to abide by and and be part of, so I can't go outside of the rules and do things or take tests and do all of these things to break the rules I tried to do."
He added:
"But nobody wants to hear that, but now all of a sudden they called me in to testify. Now they found a way to get me involved in it, and this is what they've been trying to do."
"My whole career, on every team I played on, I was the best player. I had the best numbers, but what they do is they were trying to get me out of the game a long time ago."
Following George Mitchell's report, the MLB significantly intensified testing and penalties. They check all players unannounced twice a year, and random testing continues for selected players.