Former slugger Gary Sheffield claims MLB tried to power him out of the game within the Nineteen Nineties after he spoke out concerning the growing steroid scandal.
“I was the first guy to bring up the steroid situation,” he stated throughout an look on the Foul Territory Show. “I had a problem with it because I felt [players who were juicing] were taking MVPs away from me. I had a personal problem with it because I did the Bryant Gumbel special, I was with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and I brought it up. And I said without saying names, there’s this one guy that’s hitting all these home runs that I had 150 home runs more than. And I train like you wouldn’t believe in the offseason, and I was still hitting 30 and 40 home runs a year, and now he has 150 home runs more than me. That’s impossible.”
That second, on Actual Sports activities with Bryant Gumbel, Sheffield talked about how he was the primary one to speak about using performance-enhancing medicine after the BALCO Scandal got here to mild. He felt that the punishments MLB was giving out weren’t harsh sufficient, and stated he remained a loyal advocate for banning steroids and different unlawful substances.
Nonetheless, Sheffield admitted to utilizing PEDs earlier than the 2002 season, and was additionally implicated within the BALCO scandal after a FedEx receipt was present in a federal search warrant of coach Greg Anderson’s rental.
“Then once I started speaking like that, Major League Baseball tried to hush me up,” the 22-year MLB vet stated. “Bud Selig called me into the office and told me to stop it with the steroid stuff because I am drawing too much attention to the game in a negative way.”
Sheffield batted .292 with 509 house runs and 1,676 RBI — and was good for 60.5 WAR — throughout his time with the Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, the then-Florida Marlins, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, and New York Mets.
The nine-time All-Star was on his tenth and last 12 months on the Corridor of Fame poll. Whereas he reached his highest proportion of votes — 63.9% — he nonetheless fell wanting induction into Cooperstown.
In response, Sheffield stated the voting course of is a “flawed system.”
“It’s a flawed system based on guys not watching you on a day-to-day basis. Because if they did there’s no way they could look at you with a straight face and say this guy’s better than this guy and his numbers mean more than his numbers,” he said during an appearance on The Bret Boone Podcast. “Simply from that standpoint alone, it’s biased and a number of it’s politics and a number of different issues when you take a look at it.
