strikes me as catnip for the BBTF primate family - so who's the unnamed All-Star beyond Manny and Braun, do we think?

D**** J****?

No, can't be him. The world would end.

whoa - YOU TAKE THAT BACK !

;)

D**** J****?

Sounds like it to me!!

Added into the investigative record the names of three former or then-current players he said Bosch had identified to him as PED clients: Manny Ramirez, Ryan Braun and another All-Star player. That player was the lone one not already on federal investigators' radar -- he never tested positive for any PED use, was never interviewed by authorities and was never suspended by MLB.

What happens if (when?) it comes out that there is already a steroid user in the hall of fame? Do they come up with some mechanism to remove him? Does everyone relax a bit about PED use in baseball? Do large numbers of people (larger than post-Baines induction) write off the hall of fame entirely?

#5 ... it will be news for a day or two and quickly disappear. The HoF will note they never banned PED users but left it up to the voters so they have no basis to remove the player. The BBWAA hierarchy will point out that voting was based on the best knowledge available at the time. Some group of fans will announce a boycott that will reduce HoF attendance by 12 in the first year. The player will be persona non grata at future inductions, at least until the mea culpa and apology and good works reputation rehab. Folks like me will gloat, say we told you so, time to put in Bonds. Bonds wil not be put in.

It's not J**** or O****. You really think ESPN would sit on "ARod named a HoFer as a PED user?"** It's an All-Star not in the HoF ... and probably not on the Yanks or ESPN would have pointed out that he named a teammate. Probably an AS with a Miami connection of some sort if I had to guess.

** Unless their lawyers said "HoFer" would be too identifying and make them potentially liable.

Walt, I agree, but I think the chance there's some sort of omerta regarding J****, specifically, is nonzero.

O**** was handwaved away pretty quickly.

But no, it's likely someone else. And we'll never know.

But no, it's likely someone else. And we'll never know.

The name is clearly just sitting there, and when vetting the story the ESPN lawyers took one look at it and said "Not without real corroborating evidence you don't."

Given the odd collection of names that did come out, excellent and marginal, used-to-be and never-was, Manny R and Manny A, it really could be almost anyone. Take some random name, Vernon Wells 2010 All-star from TOR. His HR were on a line going up for five years, peaking at 32 in his 6.0 WAR year of 2006. Things fell apart for the next three years settling to a low of 0.5 WAR in 2009 before he rocketed back to 3.6 WAR and 31 HR in 2010 and 25 HR in 2011. But by then he was an Angel and of course things disintegrated as he got older. (Sorry Halos fans.) I'm not trying to imply that Vernon Wells was a steroid user, rather that it's easy to find names where a narrative could be cobbled together. He was literally the first one I pulled from the list.

Piazza? Though his performance deteriorated just after they implemented testing, so he's probably pre-Biogenesis.

I'm on steroids, they are great.

Ryan Howard? He was already outed once with Ryan Zimmerman, but the digging around was done by Al-Jazeera and they were threatened by lawsuits from both players.

Their reporting was made took shoddy, even if they got the guy supposedly doping them up on record.

To go down the rabbit hole, maybe the trainer who was working with Howard was also working with that certain shortstop, looking to get back some late career pep in his step after some down years in decline.

Man if you werent doing steroids in the 90s you werent trying.