Guillen: Make it a year suspension for players using steroids

GLENDALE, Ariz. - When it comes to baseball's steroids scandal, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen would rather look ahead than look backward.

He also wouldn't mind seeing even tougher penalties to win back the public trust.

"We should put a year suspension," Guillen said Sunday as White Sox pitchers and catchers reported for spring training and worked out. "We have to make, someplace and somehow, to get people to believe we do something about it. Fifty-game suspension, that's good, but I think we've got to make people believe. If you get caught doing something, something you're not supposed to, then be more drastic.

"Then, I think people will believe a little bit more about what we're doing. That's my opinion. I'm not the guy to be saying anything, but I'm a baseball fan, and I'm a baseball fan, and I feel guilty myself why we went through. I think we have to do something really drastic about this situation."

The steroids question was sure to come up, especially in light of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez's recent admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs while he was with Texas earlier this decade.

"What happened from 2008 is in the past," Guillen said. "Leave it like that and start over with because what happened in 2007, '06, '04, '05, '03, 1999, we can't do anything about it. We can't. It's over with. We should apologize to the fans truly...I think everybody should feel guilty about it."

Guillen also doesn't buy the arguments that players didn't know what they were taking, if indeed they took performance-enhancing substances.

"I don't believe players come out and say, 'Well I don't know what I was doing,' " Guillen said. "Wow, you're not five years old. You should know what you were doing."

Whether the names of the other 103 players who allegedly tested positive for banned substances in 2003 should be released, Guillen said: "Well who cares? Baseball fans can worry about who is being caught from today through 2010, '11, '12 and '13 and '14. Whoever gets caught is already done. But yeah, why not?"

Slim and trim: Pitcher Jose Contreras, whose 2008 season in August because of a ruptured right Achilles tendon, looked to be in great shape.

Contreras said he ended last year at 255 pounds, but he said he's at 230 now. That has Ozzie Guillen excited.

"I would say Contreras always comes in shape to spring training," Guillen said. "The biggest thing is he leaves out of shape. I think the surprise of camp will be Jose. I thought Jose was going to come to spring training limping and trying to figure out how to walk. I never thought this man could lose that much weight.

"I talked to him about the case. I don't want him to be greedy and try to just get ready right away. To me, he's the biggest surprise I ever had.

So happy together: Closer Bobby Jenks said he's happy with the one-year, $5.6 million deal he signed with the Sox.

"Both sides, I know, are happy," Jenks said. "We settled to avoid arbitration for a reason. Both sides are very happy on a one-year deal. There was no discussion at all of a multiyear. Both parties were very agreeable and worked together well."

Jenks also shrugged off the trade rumors that started at the winter meetings.

"If there was any real talks, they would have given me a call and let me know where they sit on the issue," he said. "I never got that call. It's still fun to listen to rumors. Other than that, there was no real emphasis behind being traded at that time."