Former professional baseball writer Murray Chass created a bit of a stir last year when he wrote a couple of blog posts saying that Mike Piazza clearly did steroids. His reasoning: backne. As in Piazza had a lot of it when he played, it cleared up when drug testing kicked in and that means Piazza was a ‘roider.
And maybe he did do steroids. I have no idea. Chass doesn’t either, however, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to beat that drum. Today he unloads on Piazza for not talking to the media during his recent appearances at Citi Field, and presumes that’s because he doesn’t want to answer steroids questions.
Except he already has answered them. Here’s Piazza in the New York Post last year:
Maybe he’s lying. Like I said, I have no idea. But if so, it’s going to take more than Murray Chass’s continued innuendo to establish it. It’ll take some sort of evidence, the kind which Chass freely admits he does not have.
And, it should be noted, the kind of evidence mainstream writers -- the kind Chass used to be -- constantly tell bloggers they need to have before talking about things as innocuous as trade rumors, let alone steroids allegations.
I suppose one response is to say “who cares? It’s just Murray Chass.” But Murray Chass still has a Hall of Fame vote for some reason, so I think it’s worth highlighting this sort of thing when we see it.