You know how in all this steroid hullabaloo, Tony LaRussa has been running around adamantly saying there was nothing going on, nothing happening, and nothing to see? Well, it turns out there was. Last night on the Wednesday night’s edition of 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes 2, Electric Boogaloo, LaRussa claimed that they knew Canseco was juiced all along. He’d even brag about it in front of everyone and joked around about how he didn’t need to work out anymore. And why didn’t he say anything? He wanted to but he didn’t think anything would come of it. Not that MLB would have done something about it, but MLB wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it because of the Players' Association (probably and most definitely true -- Donald Fehr is as much to blame in this whole mess as anyone). The fact that Canseco was having monster years during the heyday of the Bash Brothers and was the first player to hit 40 home runs with 40 stolen bases had nothing to do with it, of course. Sandy Alderson, then GM of the A’s and now Executive VP of baseball also admitted that they were aware of Canseco’s love of injecting things into his ass but as they had no concrete proof -- there was no testing back then -- they couldn’t confront him. Again, actually a fair claim as there is that whole issue with innocent until proven guilty and unless they followed Canseco into the men’s room everytime he went, they couldn’t really prove anything. Not that they would have, anyways (see 40 HRs and 40 sb in 1988).

On top of that, it came out yesterday that the FBI was warning MLB as early as 1998 that there was a steroid problem, even singling out Canseco, but that MLB did nothing about it. Baseball, of course, denied being warned, probably losing the memo in the same in-box that the “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S. memo” was also lost in.

On the other hand, there is this -- pitchers and catchers for the Giants report tomorrow and for the A’s in two days. Sweeter words are nary to be heard.