N.Y. Daily News: Lo Duca calls WFAN

Meh...I just found out that Rays honcho, Stuart Sternberg...used to call into John Sterling’s crapantheon sports radio show back in the early 70’s!

On Monday’s cheers in the dugout: “I wasn’t there. The last few games - I’m on the DL. They have a policy here, the Nationals, when you’re on the DL you stay home. But they let me come on this trip because I live here.

“I don’t know. I’m not a big fan of it to be honest with you. I’ll be honest with you. You know, we’re struggling. Guys are just trying to have a little fun. I think they saw Figueroa getting a little upset, so they amped it up a couple of notches. I do think it’s a little bush league. At first it started off as a little fun, until he got mad. I don’t agree with it. But, also, Nelson Figueroa has nine wins in the big leagues and he needs to keep his mouth shut.”

On being named in the Mitchell Report: “I apologized. It’s something I did a long time ago. The perception, and people think that, hey, he did it last year. No. I did it a long time ago. And it was a mistake I did. I wish it would have never happened. It’s something I’ll have to deal with. But, you know, I’m sort of glad. I think it was a monkey that’s been on my back for a long time that finally flew off. It was something that I’m not proud of, obviously.

“I don’t view myself as a cheater. Obviously it’s something I did. And obviously it’s something that helped me. But, you know, a lot of people don’t realize I got into a bad collision and got run over at home plate one year, in ’95 in Double-A. And I got it prescribed to me by a doctor. A lot of guys did it. There’s a lot of guys in front of me that did it. Like I said, I’m not making excuses. It was part of survival. You want to be at home or you want to be playing? That’s the way it was. I apologized for what I did, but that’s plenty true.”