Sammy's Return to Baseball Could Be Short Lived

(Per bizofbaseball.com)

Could Sammy Sosa's return to MLB be shorted lived?

The committee headed by former Senator George Mitchell investigating steroid use in MLB has requested medical records for Sammy Sosa and Rafeal Palmeiro, along with Jason Grimsley, David Segui and Fernando Tatis,from the Baltimore Orioles. Under the HIPAA law, the players must then authorize those records to be released to the Mitchell investigation. It is believed that the players will refuse such a request. As reported by the NY Times:

    Other players under Mitchell's scrutiny have not been publicly identified, although people who have been briefed on the development said that the full list included players expected and unexpected, and that it excluded some players who might have been expected to be on the list of steroid suspects.

    The Orioles, for instance, were not asked to release medical records to Miguel Tejada, Jay Gibbons and Brian Roberts, the official said. Those players had been implicated by news-media reports describing a statement by Grimsley and, in Tejada's case, by Palmeiro, who said Tejada had given him an injection that might have contained steroids. The official, who was granted anonymity because baseball officials have been ordered not to talk about the Mitchell investigation, said their exclusion showed a lack of evidence against those three players, who are all on Baltimore's active roster.

    Investigators have looked deeply into the Orioles, among other organizations. Mitchell's staff has interviewed at least nine members of the Orioles' front office and training staff, and has searched at least six of their personal computers for evidence relating to performance-enhancing drugs, the official said.