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Word has reached the press that the Texas Rangers, a perennial disappointment in the AL West, have already thrown in the towel on the whole season. It’s sad but true. They’ve signed Sir Sidney Ponson to a minor league deal and invited him to camp.

Let’s tally up the stats: Ponson last played in the majors on May 12, 2007—not because he was ailing but because his team couldn’t stand getting blown out in the games he started. Ponson is listed at ESPN.com as 6’1” 258 lbs and that ain’t muscle folks. Ponson hasn’t had an ERA below five since 2003. In that time, Ponson has accumulated 36 losses while only pitching in 79 games, no mean accomplishment. He has also racked up at least a couple of DUI charges in the meanwhile.

I had a journalism professor mention that the better the publication that hires you, the more willing you should be to work for a pittance. He used The New Yorker as an example of the sort of magazine for which you might work gladly on a discounted rate. I quipped to my friends that I’d pay David Remnick if he’d just let me get his coffee.

Kidding aside, I think it’s important to invoke the David Remnick Rule in Ponson’s case. No salary is low enough to take this guy on. He ought to be paying the Rangers instead. No word yet on whether that’s the arrangement.

But Ponson does prove one thing that pleases the dreamer in me: You might be just a few DUIs away from a knighthood.

Andy Pettitte did exactly what I’d hoped for (but was never dumb enough to expect) on Monday when he faced a group of reporters for a press conference to address his use of HGH, his relationship with Roger Clemens, and other aspects of his life post-Mitchell Report. It was a compelling event, unlike anything I’ve seen from a professional baseball player before, and it provided a catharsis of sorts to those of us willing to face the mistakes of our ballplayer heroes.

I’ll admit that before the onset of the Performance Enhancing Drugs melodrama in baseball I was never much of a Pettitte fan. This is not to say I didn’t respect him. His fierce competitive spirit is unmistakable; one look at the intensity of his eyes when he’s on the mound is enough to convince anyone. Mostly it was his presence on the World Series-winning ’96 and ’99 Yankees that irked me—my Braves being on the losing end of both contests.

Yet his frank admissions on Monday really won me over. I can’t tell for certain if he was being entirely honest, but it sure felt like he was. I felt none of the distrust from the week before when I watched Roger Clemens’ angry, evasive display. Here was a contrite man bearing his soul as best he could, trying to answer questions that have no good answers.

ESPN.com’s Jason Stark wrote a column about his impressions of the conference in which he largely agrees that Pettitte did a convincing job and praises him accordingly but also acknowledges the risks that such direct admission carries:

“[I]n doing it this way, Pettitte drew a road map for all the drug culprits of tomorrow to follow. This is how it’s done. Unfortunately for him, unfortunately for all of them, the truth won’t set them free. But it sure beats the alternative.”

Stark is referring to the questions and the scrutiny that will continue into the indeterminate future for everyone, in particular Pettitte, tainted by this scandal. This is an unfortunate truth, and one I can’t help but confirm with my next paragraph.

There was a time during the press conference when I had trouble following Pettitte’s account. This was when he claimed not to consider himself a cheater. His interpretation of his drug use is novel. His position was something like the following: since he was using HGH while injured and only seeking to hasten his recovery, the use didn’t constitute cheating. In other words, he wasn’t trying to gain an unfair advantage on the field. He just wanted to reduce the amount of time it would take to return his body to normal. But in baseball, as in all other sports, we don’t make allowances for injured players. If you’re on the field you have to compete against others in whatever state you are in. The pitcher isn’t going to throw the ball more slowly to a batter nursing a strained oblique. The batter isn’t going to refrain from driving the ball to left just because the fielder there hasn’t recovered fully from a pulled hamstring. Part of having an even playing field is accepting injuries for what they are: limitations as to what can be done. Any unfair advantage you gain when recovering from an injury is cheating in the same way that using drugs to gain a few MPH on your fastball is.

I’m glad Pettitte could admit what he did. I thank him again for his candor and hope his press conference sets a good example for those players whose drug use will be substance of future scandals. But I would still like him to admit that he cheated.

The much-discussed Mitchell Report has been vindicated once again.  This time Paul LoDuca has issued a statement acknowledging the mistakes he has made in taking HGH in the past.  I never thought as many athletes would own up to their indiscretions as have already done so in the wake of the report. This is doubly the case because the document is based largely on the accusations of a few drug dealers. But I’m very pleased to be hearing these admissions of guilt.

I feel terrible about the damage these revelations will have on the reputations of the guilty.  I’m not thirsting for the downfall of public figures and heroes.  But cleaning up the game of baseball requires an airing of the secrets from the performance-enhanced era, or an uncovering of as many of the secrets as we can.
So I thank LoDuca for having the bravery and the integrity to admit to his mistakes.

And I have a hard time following Al Sharpton’s accusation that black athletes are receiving tougher treatment in the wake of steroid- and HGH-related scandals.  It seems that in the past few weeks the ballplayers most scrutinized and damaged by the Mitchell Report are Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Chuck Knoblauch—all of which are white.   LoDuca is also Caucasian.

It’s true that Barry Bonds has been indicted, and Clemens has not. But give him a few weeks.  After that unimpressive performance before Congress, Roger better ready his defense.