Jason Grimsley

Remember when the L.A. Times got a peek at the Grimsley affidavit?  They named Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts, Jay Gibbons, David Segui, and Roger Clemens.  Now the affidavit has been completely unsealed, and the real names are a bit different.

I guess it’s not a huge deal, since all six of these guys have been implicated independently.  But U.S. District Court Judge Edward Voss was not amused with the "irresponsible reporting."  The real Grimsley affidavit links a few new names to performance-enhancers, but there’s nothing earth-shattering.

I was recently directed to a previously unpublished Jason Grimsley interview from 2004.  It mostly focuses on Grimsley’s guitar preferences, but it also reveals some more of Grimsley’s friends within baseball.  Just in case you’re not sick of this story yet.

I thought I would play my part in the Jason Grimsley extravaganza by digging up some useful, exclusive info.  Sadly, that didn’t happen.  Instead, I found the following innocuous facts:

1.  One of Grimsley’s best friends is former Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti.  Tremonti created the band Alter Bridge after Creed’s singer left.  There’s a funny story about Grimsley when he was a Yankee where Joe Torre yelled at Grimsley for throwing batting practice to Tremonti and other band members even though he was still on the DL.  Tremonti’s agent denied an interview request; Alter Bridge is currently on tour in Europe.

2. A Cessna airplane once crashed into Grimsley’s home in Overland Park, a Kansas City suburb.  Five were killed in the crash but Grimsley’s wife and kids were unharmed.

3. Grimsley only has nine toes because of a motorcycle accident from his youth.

4. He was a player’s union representative back in 2003, and some of his comments drew the ire of fans.

5. A couple of his friends in baseball besides Chuck Knoblauch include current D-Rays reliever Shawn Camp and retired reliever Curt Leskanic.  Leskanic may be named in the document; he has admitted to employing at least one unfair advantage.  For what it’s worth, one blogger thought Leskanic resembled a steroid user as a Red Sox back in 2004.

Deadspin, which accurately broke the Matt Lawton steroid story, has a reliable source with some exclusive info about Jason Grimsley’s affidavit.  Basically, Albert Pujols’s trainer is mentioned as a referrer for amphetamines.  May mean nothing, but it would certainly result in a ton of scrutiny for Pujols.  Read up at Deadspin.

Well the hot story right now is obviously Jason Grimsley’s naming of names.  If you don’t feel like reading Grimsley’s entire affadavit, just check out page 13.  It’s one of the more interesting pages, wherein Grimsley states that a certain steroid user was "very obvious and had the worst back acne he’d ever seen."

I decided to do some detective work by Googling various players’ names in conjuction with "back acne."  (Can you tell I was bored?)  Anyway, yes, I did find many Sammy/Barry references, but I also ran into this.  It’s a surreal, fascinating story about Juan Gonzalez from Jeff Sullivan, and yes, back acne and baby oil make an appearance.

Given the success of that detective work, I proceeded to flip through all of Grimsley’s former teammates.  I then compiled a list of players who probably did not use steroids, because I figured that would be easier than picking out the ones who did.  Here you go:

Mike Maddux
Terry Mulholland
John Kruk
Mickey Morandini
Felix Fermin
Billy Ripken
Randy Velarde (wait, scratch that)
J.T. Snow
Gary DiSarcina
Jim Abbott
Chuck McElroy (the glasses gave him super powers anyway)
Chuck Knoblauch
Joe Girardi
Lance Johnson
Joe Randa
Neifi Perez
Calvin Pickering (couldn’t possibly get any bigger) 

It’s safe to assume that anyone not on this list used steroids.