Giambi: ‘I was wrong’
The commissioner’s office intends to investigate reported remarks by Jason Giambi that the sport should apologize for use of performance-enhancing drugs and the Yankees star’s comment that he was “wrong for doing that stuff.”
Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations in the commissioner’s office, spoke Friday with Yankees president Randy Levine about the matter.
“I was wrong for doing that stuff,” Giambi was quoted as saying in Friday’s editions of USA Today. “What we should have done a long time ago was stand up – players, ownership, everybody – and said: ‘We made a mistake.’ …”
Selig discusses labor
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is sorry the sport didn’t act sooner to fix its problems – with the reserve clause.
The clause prevented players from changing teams or reaping the benefits of the free market until Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith won an arbitration case overturning it in 1975.
“That should have been modified decades before someone like me came into the sport,” Selig, who became the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner in 1970, said after receiving an award from the Sports Lawyers Association in Cambridge, Mass. “Change was long overdue, and some balance to the relationship was necessary.”
Around the leagues
Roger Clemens allowed three hits, including a solo home run and struck out two while throwing 58 pitches in four innings for Class A Tampa, his first minor league start as he prepares to rejoin the Yankees. … Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen called a radio show and unleashed a profanity-laced outburst after the host questioned why starting catcher A.J. Pierzynski wasn’t in the lineup for the interleague opener against the Cubs. … Washington right-hander Jason Bergmann (1-3, 2.76 ERA) went on the 15-day disabled list with a swollen pitching elbow, meaning four-fifths of the team’s opening day rotation is sidelined by injury. … Texas third baseman Hank Blalock (.285, five HRs, 16 RBIs), who has had shoulder discomfort in recent days, will have surgery to remove a rib Monday and could be out up to three months.