The Final Score

Here's this week's installment of everyone's favorite feature on Newsday.com, "Where Are They Now?" Former Mets manager Davey Johnson talks to Newsday about leading the United States baseball team to the Beijing Olympics this summer.

And here's our invitation list to our Where-Are-They-Now one-year anniversary party that I hope to host next December: Davey Johnson, Brian Mahoney, Mike Stanley, Matt Bahr, Jeff Hostetler, Leonard Marshall, Y.A. Tittle, Ottis Anderson, Barry Lyons, Bruce Harper, Mackey Sasser, Ken Phelps and Kenny "Sky" Walker.

*Programming note: I'm taking this weekend off. So unless Roger Clemens announces that he did take steroids, the blog will be silent until Monday morning. See ya.

Here's our stories:

While walking through the hallway of the Rayburn building this afternoon, I heard someone say, "See ya later, Mr. Towns." I stopped short. The name immediately hit a chord with me.

Edolphus Towns, the Democrat from NY, met with Roger Clemens while Clemens was on his Rocket Does Congress tour a few days before his hearing. And Towns and Clemens even held a joint news conference that day in which Towns expressed support for The Rocket and denounced Brian McNamee.

So, naturally, I chased Towns down to see what he thinks about Clemens now. Towns, without blinking, said, "I think Clemens is guilty, of course I do. I think he was lying."

You gotta love politicians.

WASHINGTON - I'll be spending the day in Washington for the Congressional hearing on drugs in sports. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has graciously provided power strips for reporters, but they are restricting us from accessing their wireless network. So I will send updates from my Blackberry as often as I can. Stay tuned ...

12:29 p.m.: Standing outside the hearing room, chairman Rush said, "There might be a possibility that legislation might not be required."

And going back to the SpyGate question, the New York Congressman who made a mockery of himself went right up to Stern after the hearing and said, "I just want to thank you for your testimony." Stern whispered, "I'm a Giants fan." And they both laughed and went their merry ways.

12:24 p.m.: We're getting out of hand here, thanks to New York's own Vito Fossella. After he was done asking the witnesses for their feelings on testing high school athletes for steroids, Fossella turned his attention to Goodell and asked about SpyGate. "There's a lot of unhappy Jets fans." Goodell said, "We dealt with that very effectively." And this hearing ended on that note.

12:01 p.m.: Rep. Cliff Stearns (Fla.) asked the witnesses whether they would be willing to adopt the Olympic testing program, which is what Stearns endorses. Upshaw spoke first and said: "We feel our program is better than the Olympics in many ways." He later admitted that the Olympic drug testing program would look different if the Olympic athletes had a union. So when Upshaw said the football test is better, does he mean it is better for the athletes and not the sport? Sterns then pointed the same question to Fehr, who said, "We have an obligation to bargain standards," not to accept the Olympic program without negotiation. Stearns shot back, "That's not the question." Finally, Fehr said his problem with the Olympic drug testing policy is that it bans drugs that he said are legal for common folk to take, but not athletes. The baseball program, Fehr said, "Is pegged to U.S. law."

Continue reading "Live blogging from hearing on drugs in sports" »

I'll be spending all day in the Islanders blog box at Nassau Coliseum to cover the trade deadline festivities with Islanders bloggers. Craziness surely will ensue...

4:21 p.m.

Okay, I'm going to send some videos I shot of Garth Snow and then call it a day. I had fun. I hope the bloggers had fun. And no one has thrown anything at me for that Al Arbour column. (Not yet, at least.) Hope to do this again, sometime...

4:14 p.m.

Garth Snow just met with reporters (and bloggers). Said there was one big trade he was really close to doing but it fell through. He would only add that the player he was trying to get never was traded. So go ahead and start your guessing.

3:31 p.m.

We're wanted in room 6. News????

3:26 p.m.

ANOTHER ISLANDERS TRADE!

Marc-Andre Bergeron to the Ducks for a third-rounder.

Reaction from bloggers:

"He kind of dropped off this year, as opposed to when he was picked up last year," B.D. Gallof of the The Bouncing Puck says. "He and Berard are a lot alike, and it seemed like one of them would be expendable. Bergeron had more value, so they probably got good value from someone who was more valuable. Makes sense that they got the stay-at-home defenseman from San Jose now that we know they were trading one of defensively unreliable players."

"Either him or Berard were going, and there's been a lot of frustration with Bergeron's game," Tom Liodice of The Tiger Track says. "What he had on offense he lacked on defense."

"I felt his play had come around as of late, and while he was inconsistent at best I feel the Islanders got good value for him because of their mistrust," Mike Schuerlein of IslesBlogger says.

Continue reading "Live blogging from Nassau Coliseum's Isles blog box" »

This is a team made up of the most notable players who remain free agents today, two weeks into spring training:

LF: Barry Bonds
CF: Kenny Lofton
RF: Sammy Sosa
3B: Tony Graffanino*
SS: Royce Clayton
2B: Jerry Hairston Jr.
1B: Ryan Klesko
C: Mike Piazza

Bench: Corey Patterson, Neifi Perez, Julio Franco, Preston Wilson

Rotation: Roger Clemens, Kyle Lohse, Jeff Weaver, David Wells, Freddy Garcia*

Bullpen: Armando Benitez, Rodrigo Lopez*, Antonio Alfonseca, Jose Mesa, Bob Wickman, Eric Milton, Akinori Otsuka*.

* (currently injured)

My explanation is listed here in today's Web column.

Yes, I'm working well ahead this week. Thanks for noticing.

Anyway, this week's person is a former manager in the majors with ties to New York.

I know that's not much for you to go on, but you've got remember today is Monday and I need to keep this going until Friday!!! Anyway, I'll give more hints as the week goes on.

After visiting the Islanders blog box tomorrow, I'm going to Capitol Hill Wednesday. I'll be attending the Congressional hearing in which the commissioners from all four major sports are expected to attended. It is called, "Drugs in Sports: Compromising the Health of Athletes and Undermining the Integrity of Competition," and it begins at 9:30 a.m.

And as I type this, I'm awaiting a call from this week's where-are-they-now.

Sorry to boast, but this is a pretty neat job I have.

Just made plans for tomorrow's NHL trade deadline. I'm going to cover the happenings - or non-happenings - from the Islanders' blog box all day. I'll even bring my video camera.

Here's how it's going down: The team is opening its blog box at 10:30 a.m. - many, many hours earlier than normal - so they can blog about the Islanders' activity (or inactivity) from inside Nassau Coliseum. And I'll be there with them, blogging away.

(FYI: No, that's not me in the picture, thank you. It's just something I found on Google. Just wanted to point that out.)

Koby Clemens, Roger's son, reported to Astros minor-league mini-camp this morning and apparently was not asked (a) if he ever used HGH or (b) for his thoughts of his father saying his mother had Brian McNamee inject HGH in her behind his back.

Koby, however, did say he had a hard time watching the Congressional hearings, according to a story posted on the Houston Chronicle Web site.

“I turned it on at the beginning and they started hammering him and I couldn’t watch it,” he said. “I was getting so ticked off so I turned it off. And apparently right when I turned it off it kind of went better for my dad and so I’m kind of mad I missed that.”

Click here for the whole story.