King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Bud Selig is threatening to suspend Jason Giambi, the closest thing baseball has to a truth teller about steroids.

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June 14, 2007 | USA Today is reporting that baseball commissioner Bud Selig is leaning toward suspending Jason Giambi if the New York Yankees slugger doesn't agree to cooperate with former Sen. George Mitchell's investigation into steroid use.

Citing an anonymous high-ranking baseball official, Bob Nightengale writes that Selig wants a decision from Giambi by Tuesday.

That's pretty rich for those of us who follow Selig's actions, if inactivity can be described as action. (Readers will please insert their own NBA Finals joke here.) A decision by Tuesday. Good one.

The Mitchell investigation lacks subpoena power and no players are known to have cooperated with it. Selig's trying to use it as a stick to get Giambi to come clean. The problem with that is that Jason Giambi is already the come-cleanest player in the major leagues, and Selig's threat means he's about to get punished for it.

Giambi hasn't said much, but he has still been more open and honest about his steroid use than any other active player. He held his strange apology for something he wouldn't name but everybody knew what he was talking about press conference before the 2005 season, and last month he told Nightengale "I was wrong for doing that stuff."

"What we should have done a long time ago," Giambi said in that May 17 article, which is what has him in hot water now with Selig, "was stand up -- players, ownership, everybody -- and said: 'We made a mistake.'

"We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward ... Steroids and all of that was a part of history. But it was a topic that everybody wanted to avoid. Nobody wanted to talk about it."

That's it. That makes Jason Giambi the Deep Throat of the steroids era, at least among active players. Jose Canseco, who with each passing month looks more and more like the last honest man who ever swung a bat, is the Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Just in case you don't have a scorecard handy.

Next page: Tell the truth and you're going to get punished. Now tell the truth