Who were the three players who snitched on A-Rod to SI?

Remember how the Mitchell Report alleged that Gene Orza tipped off some MLB players in the fall of 2004 as to when they would get their steroids test? Well, according to the Sports Illustrated story breaking the news about Alex Rodriguez reportedly testing positive for steroids in 2003, A-Rod was one of those players getting that tip.

That in itself isn’t shocking to me. But what is shocking is that three MLB players told SI that A-Rod had been tipped off. This means, of course, that Joe Torre isn’t the only baseball figure as of late to break the clubhouse code:

Here’s the info from SI:

According to the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, in September 2004, Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the players’ union, violated an agreement with MLB by tipping off a player (not named in the report) about an upcoming, supposedly unannounced drug test. Three major league players who spoke to SI said that Rodriguez was also tipped by Orza in early September 2004 that he would be tested later that month. Rodriguez declined to respond on Thursday when asked about the warning Orza provided him.

When Orza was asked on Friday in the union’s New York City office about the tipping allegations, he told a reporter, “I’m not interested in discussing this information with you.”

So, I wonder who the three players are who talked to SI, and if they were Yankees. And I also wonder if this were the real reason A-Rod was called A-Fraud in the clubhouse. This also means that given the timeframe – September 2004 – we can’t say that Alex didn’t do steroids as a Yankee.

Besides wondering which players told on A-Rod, this story confirms Alex’s overall (take your pick) stupidity, hubris, or arrogance. Because according to the Mitchell Report, when Orza tipped off players, he told them that they had failed the 2003 steroids test. So that means that A-Rod knew that he had failed that test. Yet he still told Katie Couric last year that he never took steroids, and was never even tempted to take steroids. Unreal.

So what happens now? From what I heard on ESPNews today, it doesn’t look like the Yanks have any grounds to void Alex’s contract, as there’s nothing about PEDs in it. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why the Yanks didn’t put anything into all players’ contracts about steroids, especially after the case of Jason Giambi. They banned pickup basketball games, but not steroids? Sheesh.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.