A wonderful week for Major League Baseball continued Wednesday with the news that Astros infielder Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty to charges of lying to Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs within his sport.

It's a misdemeanor, and he could get a year in jail, but he is expected to get less time, or no time plus probation. The Stew posted the charges in greater detail yesterday.

To recap the past few days: the game's premier player, Alex Rodriguez, admitted to using steroids after someone illegally leaked his name from a list of 104 players who tested positive for PEDs; Tejada, a former MVP, lies to Congress.

Then there's the mind-blowing Roberto Alomar story, which at least has no steroids.

Same goes for former No. 1 overall pick Matt Bush, who simply beat up some teen-age lacrosse players in a drunken, expletive-filled rage, allegedly.

What's next? Federal charges for Roger Clemens? (Yes, probably.)

If there really is no such thing as bad publicity, this is the best

This sounds like a story arc from the old primetime soap "Dynasty" after the show jumped the shark.

But it's Roberto Alomar, a probable Hall of Famer, so here we go.

The New York Daily News reports Alomar's former girlfriend claims in a lawsuit that he insisted on having unprotected sex with her while knowing he had AIDS.

Whoa. It's not quite the same "whoa" felt after learning about Magic Johnson in 1991, but it's a big "whoa."

Ilya Dall filed a $15-million suit against Alomar on Jan. 30. Dall has tested negative for HIV, but in the suit claims "Alomar caused her emotional distress and exposed her children to the virus." She and Alomar ended a three-year relationship in October.

As if those details aren't shocking enough, from the Daily News:

In April 2005, Alomar told Dall he was suffering from erectile dysfunction and confided "he was raped by two Mexican men after playing a ballgame in New Mexico or a Southwestern state when he was 17," the suit says.

Whoa, again.

The Daily News

A few smoky links to start your day ...

• Union chief Donald Fehr says it is "unlikely" that any more names on the list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 will be released because "Whatever rights individual players had under those agreements have to be respected." [L.A. Times]

• Y! Sports Jeff Passan thinks Fehr and Bud Selig should not "walk" away in the wake of A-Rod's admission. [Y! Sports]

• Lance Berkman can't make up his mind. He finds it "deplorable" that the confidence of the drug testing was violated but — as someone who claims to never have done performance-enhancers — he still really "would like to know who has" come up positive. And he thinks other players want to know, too. [Houston Chronicle]

• Some Angels fans are excited that Bobby Abreu, and not Manny Ramirez, is signing with the Anaheim American League club. And they've got bad Photoshop to prove it. [Halos Heaven]

• B.J. Upton is famous enough to appear in an Adidas commercial

Thanks to SportsRadioInterviews.com, you Internet consumers who crave A-Rod content (sick, sick people) could listen to, quite literally, 6 billion interviews with people talking about Alex Rodriguez.

UPDATE Feb. 11: SportsRadioInterviews.com brings two more pages of links to audio of people talkin' A-Rod.

Part II includes comments from Fay Vincent and Marvin Miller. Fancy.

Part III includes David Wells and John Cena. What? Wrestlers and steroids? C'mon.

People can't stop talking about A-Rod, and we the media can't stop talking about people talking about A-Rod.

Back to the original post:

Want to hear the actual A-Rod interview, because the transcript didn't do it for you? Go here.

Want to hear Peter Gammons talk about the interview, because the actual interview didn't do it for you? Can't. The link is broken. The link is fixed.

Want to hear Mark DeRosa, an actual player and not a simulation, talk about the A-Rod interview? Go here. [Bonus: former Bears receiver Tom Waddle is asking

The Houston Astros bring to baseball a history of unique uniforms.

This season, they might want to try an all-orange jumpsuit ensemble in support of shortstop Miguel Tejada, who entangled himself in the government's investigation of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Tejada, the Washington Post reports, faces charges of lying to congressional investigators, actions which could land him on the disabled list in jail for a year.

A suggestion: Orlando Cabrera still is among the available shortstops in the free-agent pool if the ‘Stros feel they might need a seasoned Plan "B."

Another suggestion: Cut a deal, Miggy and maybe you'll get off with probation. Tejada is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday. And he thought arbitration was a rough hearing.

From the Post:

[Federales] accuse Tejada of giving false statements to congressional staffers about his conversations with another player about steroids and human growth hormone. ... Tejada faces a maximum penalty of a year in jail, but

A few hot links to start your day ...

• Worried about his surgically repaired knee, the Mets have asked their ace, Venezuela's Johan Santana, to avoid the WBC. So avoid it he will. [N.Y. Daily News]

• Voodoo statistical analysis of Braden Looper (a jock, a pro jock), who is now a Brewer. [BrewCrew Ball]

• It occurs to Pete Abe that A-Rod is going to have a monstrous statistical season, even for A-Rod. [LoHud]

• Because you can't get enough, a BoSox blog reviews A-Rod's ESPN interview. [Red Sox Monster]

• Don Fehr, or at least a piece of paper he signed, explains why the 2003 drug tests which caught A-Rod were not destroyed as originally planned. [Biz of Baseball]

• Chad Bradford, the Rays' side-winding crackercrawler, is out 3-4 months after elbow surgery. Drat! [The Heater]

• Rich E. Rich wonders if the Phillies didn't eat their Wheaties, and maybe that's why they're not on the box like most recent World Series winners. [Home Run Derby]

• Radio guys talk to Kevin Towers, who's on his

If you thought watching A-Rod bare his soul about steroids to Peter Gammons was fun, imagine how much enjoyment watching it over and over while writing down every word must have been. I don't have to imagine it, because I did it last night.

Makes a guy want to run out to GNC for some transcriber-enhancing supplements.

So, in case you didn't pay your cable bill and ESPN was blacked out, or if your interwebs Video Player isn't working on your Web Browsing Machine, all you need to do is read the rest of this post to learn all about A-Rod's true confessions.

In addition to the back and forth among G-Mon and A-Rod, I added comments in italics when appropriate. Or inappropriate. No matter, if you're a hard-core junkie for A-Rod (or Gammons, I suppose), this is your one-stop interview shop.

First, here's a quick count of A-Rod's key words and phrases:

• Mentions "God": three times.

• Says "honest": 13 times.

• "Truth": 12.

• "Steroid": three.

• Says "I": 324 times.

• "Me": 37.

•

They say everyone has a double. Sometimes, you look at a ballplayer's face and go, "I know I've seen that guy somewhere before." Such is the essence of DoubleHeader, which we plan to make a regular feature here at the Stew. Enjoy:

With the baseball world on A-Rod overload right now, perhaps we can take a break from that scandal and attend to other matters. After all, no matter what kind of serious trouble Rodriguez might be in, at least nobody died.

They're not so fortunate halfway 'round the world.

Three suspects were arrested in Austria on Sunday in the stabbing death of Marian Cozma, a Romanian handball star, who was killed earlier in the day at a Hungarian night club. Teammates Zarko Sesum and Ivan Pesic also were stabbed and sustained serious injuries.

Romania as a nation is mourning Cozma, who at 26 years old was called a "giant" of the sport on the European Handball Federation's Web site.

Cozma, coincidentally, also looked a lot like in-limbo Brewers right-hander Ben Sheets