Michael Weiner, Marvin Miller and Don Fehr (AP)

Hey, how about that? One day after baseball writers pitched a shutout with Hall of Fame inductions because of suspicion over performance-enhancing drugs, Major League Baseball and its players' union announced an agreement that literally goes deeper than any other professional sport in the U.S. ever has into drug testing its athletes.

Word came on Thursday that there will be blood testing for human growth hormone (HGH) next season. The news was first reported by Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. Tests will be random, unannounced and reportedly will use "enhanced techniques" to find what they're looking for. A new test for testosterone, which eight major leaguers were caught taking during the 2012 season, most notably Carlos Ruiz and Melky Cabrera, will also be introduced. Union and management reportedly were close to agreeing on HGH testing in November, and here we are just five weeks or so until spring training, so it's set.

"You see?" the league and union can say. "There's no drug problem. Nobody got in the Hall of Fame, everybody will get blood drawn. We're on it!"

Well, if there's an afterlife, Marvin Miller is smoking a cigarette and shaking his head at Michael Weiner somewhere in it.

[Related: MLB to begin in-season testing for HGH this year]

Sammy Sosa points to a picture he took with President Obama (Flickr)

What a world we live in. Sammy Sosa didn't garner many headlines on Wednesday for only winning 12.5 percent of the vote in his first time on the Hall of Fame ballot — a staggeringly-low total that almost guarantees he'll never see induction over the next 15 years.

[Related: New York Times takes unique approach for HOF announcement]

The former Chicago Cubs slugger, however, is attracting plenty of Internet interest on Thursday for his new Pinterest page. No, he hasn't yet started posting tips for DIY kiddie parties or his recipe for cranapple muffins. But the fact the exiled Sosa has a presence on the female-dominated social media network has a lot of people excited.

(Saco River Auction House)

A 148-year-old team photo of the amateur Brooklyn Atlantics, which the Library of Congress calls "the first dated baseball card," might fetch $100,000 or more when it goes up for auction next month in Maine. Problem is, nobody knows exactly how much it's worth.

Thursday's sports front (Kevin Negandhi via TBL)The New York Post and Daily News usually corner the market with it comes to buzzy front pages that make national news.

The New York Times, however, got into the act on Thursday morning by making a statement with the front page of its sports section. Adorned with a "Welcome To Cooperstown" headline, a majority of the sheet remained blank in reference to the BBWAA not electing anyone to the Hall of Fame for the first time since 1996.

Big League Stew was a bit partial to our own art in the aftermath of the ballot-wide snub, but there's no denying the power of opening the nation's paper of record to see silence in paper-and-ink form. Early January is usually a time for papers to break out sweet file art of that year's inducted ballplayers, followed by a few perfunctory quotes and vote totals. Meanwhile, the reader gets a nice winter escape as he or she daydreams about a beautiful summer day on the great lawn of Cooperstown.

(US Presswire)It was around this time last winter when Jerry Dipoto, who was in the midst of an aggressive rookie offseason as general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, impressed us by taking time from his busy schedule to write a legitimate and sincere response to a loyal fan’s trade suggestion.

Of course that was still during the honeymoon period of Dipoto's new job, so I'm sure most of the letters he received were on the positive and encouraging side, therefore making it easier to budget time for responses.

One disappointing year later, though, it wouldn't be surprising if the tone of the letters had changed after the Angels missed the playoffs, and one also couldn't blame Dipoto if he had a change in priorities and attitude as the pressure and urgency to get back on track in 2013 mounted.

But that hasn't been the case at all. Despite the fact that he's been just as busy this winter, having stunned the world again by signing Josh Hamilton, while also acquiring Tommy Hanson via trade from the Atlanta Braves and signing free agent pitchers Joe Blanton, Ryan Madson and Sean Burnett, Dipoto still has the time to make fans feel like their questions and concerns matter, and it's still pretty darn cool to see.

(@KateHiggy_4)We haven't yet heard any official word from Barry Bonds and there's probably a good reason for the silence from his camp. The former San Francisco Giants star has been spotted bumming around Maui this week, a destination that's both physically and mentally a world away from Cooperstown.

Joe Kinsey of Busted Coverage has a roundup of the people who have spotted Bonds around the Four Seasons in Maui in recent days, including a TMZ picture of the Home Run King strolling along the beach with a Brent Musburger-approved woman. That probably explains why BarryBonds.com still hasn't been updated since the Giants won the World Series or why he hasn't released a Comic Sans statement like his brother-in-exile Roger Clemens did.

That's not to say we can't guess how Bonds is feeling as he lays by the pool. He's on record as saying it would be "very sad" if he didn't make the Hall of Fame on his first try and recently said he didn't understand why the current climate was so biased against him:

(AP)Union chief Michael Weiner stuck up for his players Wednesday after none of them were elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.

In remarks that decried results that kept the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio on the outside of Cooperstown looking in, Weiner said baseball writers reasoning was 'unfortunate, if not sad.'

Here's his complete statement:

"Today's news that those members of the BBWAA afforded the privilege of casting ballots failed to elect even a single player to the Hall of Fame is unfortunate, if not sad. Those empowered to help the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum document the history of the game failed to recognize the contributions of several Hall of Fame worthy players. To ignore the historic accomplishments of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, for example, is hard to justify. Moreover, to penalize players exonerated in legal proceedings -- and others never even implicated -- is simply unfair. The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game. Several such players were denied access to the Hall today. Hopefully, this will be rectified by future voting."

In a way, Weiner is dreaming if he thinks steroids still won't be on people's minds when they visit the Hall of Fame and see plaques for Clemens and Bonds and so forth. Just because they were exonerated doesn't end the suspicion — obviously.

In the wake of that, Sports Illustrated's Jeff Pearlman said on Twitter that he believed the Hall of Fame shutout is the legacy of Don Fehr, the former leader of the players union that was reluctant to allow its membership to submit to testing until agreeing in 2002: