All posts by Payne Insider

According to a report by Sports Illustrated, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2003, when he was with the Texas Rangers and won the AL home run title and MVP award.

Sources say that Rodriguez was on a list of 104 players who tested positive that year, when Major League Baseball conducted tests to see if mandatory random drug testing was needed. However, in 2003, there were no penalties for a positive result.

Rodriguez, reached at a Miami gym for comment by Sports Illustrated, said, “You’ll have to talk to the union.”

Asked if there were an explanation for the positive test result, Rodriguez told Sports Illustrated, : “I’m not saying anything.”

Scott Boras, Rodriguez’s agent, did not immediately return calls from ESPN.com seeking comment.

Both the Yankees and the Rangers told ESPN they would not comment.

Michael Weiner, general counsel for the players’ union, declined to comment, and said he did not know if the union would have any comment Saturday.

Major League Baseball plans to release a statement regarding SI’s report later Saturday.

Home

Todd Haley will take the job as the new coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. An official announcement is expected from the team later today.

Haley, the offensive coordinator for the NFC champion Arizona Cardinals, had been seen as a favorite for the job for weeks. FOXSports.com and the Kansas City Star reported Thursday evening that the Chiefs, seeking a replacement for the fired Herm Edwards, had offered Haley the job.

Haley, who turns 42 on Feb. 28, and new Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli worked together with the New York Jets between 1997 and 1999, with Pioli as director of pro personnel and Haley as an assistant coach.

Now that Kansas City has some of the important pieces in place it will for sure have to start addressing the roster as soon as possible. Two of the main keys to the Chiefs in Larry Johnson and Tony Gonzalez have expressed interest in being traded.

Home

NEW YORK — James scored a season-high 52 points in his 21st career triple-double, joined Michael Jordan as the only visitors with multiple 50-point games at the present Madison Square Garden, and led Cleveland to a 107-102 victory over New York on Wednesday night.

Two nights after Bryant set a record at the present building with 61 points, James was on pace to break it after scoring 20 in the first quarter.

“I don’t go out there for the numbers, I just play my game,” James said. “You guys seen every phase of my game tonight, the scoring, the rebounding, the assists and defensively just trying to attack the opposing team.

“I never thought you could look at the box score and see somebody with 50 with a triple-double, but it’s happened.”

James added 11 assists and 10 rebounds, becoming the first player since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975 to have a triple-double in a 50-point game. James grabbed his final rebound with under 2 seconds left, then tumbled out of bounds as time expired.

“We go out and try to win ball games. Myself and Kobe go out and win ball games and sometimes we make games like that,” James said before the game.

“It just so happens where we get high numbers or we make an unbelievable play. It just happens that way. But we’re out there first of all trying to win the basketball game. I never go into a game saying I’m going to try to put up a decent amount of numbers or anything like that. I’ve never been that type of player.”

The focus on James’ first trip here in November was his free agency in 2010, days after the Knicks made a pair of trades to clear salary cap space for a run at him. This time, the building was still buzzing from Bryant’s performance, and the talk was on whether James could top it.

He said he wouldn’t try — unless the situation called for it.

Home

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers are still trying to bring back Manny Ramirez. Only the enigmatic slugger doesn’t like their latest deal.

He rejected their third offer — for one year — that would have made him baseball’s second-highest paid player behind Alex Rodriguez.

That leaves Ramirez unsigned three months after deciding to test his value in the recession-plagued free agent market, with the Dodgers the only team to have confirmed making any offers.

“We have interest in signing Manny,” general manager Ned Colletti told the Associated Press in an e-mail Tuesday. “We don’t have a deadline but these situations can change in an instant and either side can change them in an instant.”

Team owner Frank McCourt said the team still wants Ramirez back, but “at some point, we have to move on,” he was quoted by MLB.com, which attended McCourt’s hospital visit to cancer patients along with the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

The latest deal — a one-year, $25 million offer — was rejected Monday. It would have given Ramirez the second-highest average salary behind New York Yankees third baseman Rodriguez’s $275 million, 10-year contract.

“We came up with what we thought was a creative proposal to give him a lot of money, and well deserved in a challenging economy, and give him flexibility if he feels it’s important to test free agency next year,” McCourt told MLB.com. “I don’t see long-term contracts happening in this market we’re in.”

Ramirez, who turns 37 in May, is believed to be seeking a four or five-year deal starting at $25 million per season.

“We’d love to sign Manny,” McCourt told MLB.com. “But we have to be prudent with our decisions. This is about winning now, but also in the future.”

Colletti initially tried to re-sign the left fielder, offering a two-year, $45 million deal with a buyout or a club option that was ignored by Ramirez’s agent Scott Boras and later withdrawn by the team.

“The agent is challenging to work with and we’ve tried hard,” McCourt told MLB.com. “We’ve made three efforts and we still have not received a specific number from the agent, and I don’t know what to tell you. At some point, you have to move on and start to get ready to win a championship.”

The Dodgers’ second attempt involved salary arbitration in December, but Ramirez said no to that, too.

Home