A Matter of Trust

Never has a moment in baseball made me feel more like Michael Coreleone in Godfather III then the rescission of the 50-game suspension handed down to last year’s National League MVP, Ryan Braun, when he tested positive for extremely high levels of testosterone.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. I thought I was through with screaming from the rooftops about how poorly baseball is run and how foolish they've been in dealing with the drugs. Weren't they getting better? Hardly.

At this point, major league baseball remians popular by accident. It has a business model that makes no sense. It has too many teams that never have a realistic chance of competing. It operates under separate sets of rules between the leagues, which is idiotic. But perhaps its biggest problem is that it is presided over by Bud Selig, The Worst Commissioner in Baseball History™, a point I’ve made before and now need to make again.

My issues with Selig stem mostly from his fragile spine. He’s never once stood up for the game in a meaningful way by staring down narrow-minded owners who care only about their bottom line and not the health of the entire sport. And even in those rare cases where he could get consensus with the owners, Selig had no ability to take on a players’ union run by short-sighted shallow thinkers over any issues of substance, including substance abuse. By not standing up, Selig has fallen for almost every issue, not the least of which was baseball’s rampant drug problem, one of the worst scandals in American sports.

Selig’s apologists point to his leadership in bettering baseball’s drug policy as proof of his effectiveness while conveniently forgetting that Selig’s conversion on this issue came not of his free will but at the business end of a gun pointed at his head by Congress.

And yet, while baseball’s drug policy is indeed far better these days along comes a case like Braun's to put baseball and its approach nearly back to square one. Losing the Braun arbitration in the way they did makes it look as though baseball is being run by Peter Griffin. Maybe that would actually be better.

The Braun case more than demonstrates that baseball's brain trust can't even handle a urine sample effectively. How can it be trusted on anything reeking of even slightly more complication?

Let’s set the background.

Braun has claimed that his elevated testosterone levels aren’t the result of illegal drug use, which seems dubious if only because I’m still waiting for the first person to test positive to actually admit that they really did ingest illegal drugs.

Braun’s argument raised questions about the integrity of the testing process and was buttressed not by his actual test results but by the inherent distrust most people have toward drug testing in the first place. Anyone who has ever been subjected to a drug test, and by now that’s most of us, always fears the mythical “false positive” test. Despite the sophistication of the testing at this point that makes it nearly impossible to get a “false positive,” the potential for a false result hangs over the program like Billy Crystal hangs over the Oscars.

And so it is, sometimes to extremes, that we let irrational fears like these drive results that don’t seem plausible. Irrational or not, however, the fact remains that whenever there is any sort of hiccup in the protocol related to procuring and then securing the urine sample the results will always be suspicious. But that's not news. Nearly every drug testing case that is lost is because of an issue related to the testing protocol, no matter how small or insignificant of an issue it might be.

Had baseball’s deep thinkers remembered this while taking a more sober view of their case and acknowledged this fact before they ever decided to suspend Braun, this mess could have been avoided and Braun, if he is a drug user, caught under circumstances that could never have been questioned.

Braun based his claim of a false positive on what his lawyers argued was a broken custody chain in the handling of his urine sample. That’s not really true, but it’s true enough, which was also enough for neutral arbitrator Shyman Das.

The reason it’s true enough is simply that the person who took the urine sample for major league baseball never bothered to read Protocol 101. The same holds for MLB’s lawyers. From the time that the sample was collected until it was shipped (not tested, but shipped) was 44 hours or nearly two full days. The protocol in baseball is that once the sample is collected it is to be shipped immediately via FedEx to baseball’s testing lab in Montreal.

When Braun’s sample was collected, it was a Friday evening and supposedly after the local FedEx office had closed. So the collector let the sample sit in a container of Tupperware on his desk for almost two days, which reminds me never to accept an invitation to eat leftovers at that collector’s house.

You don’t need to know any more about the case than that to know that baseball should have just bit its lip and thrown out the sample and either re-tested Braun or lived to fight another day. No arbitrator was ever going to sign off on the results and the punishment that comes from them under that scenario. Again, it’s the fear of a false positive that mandates there be no screw up, no matter how small or insignificant in the testing process.

Anyone who has litigated a drug case, and I’ve done several of them, knows this to be the case. Yet baseball’s lawyers convinced baseball’s management that this fact didn’t matter and now they have a mess on their hands.

How did they get to this point? Because when you look at it holistically and not necessarily legally, you pretty much come to the conclusion that Braun had something illegal in his system. So you try to make it work because suspending the reigning MVP is a pretty big get.

In fairness to the collector, it wasn’t as if Braun peed directly into the Tupperware container. Braun peed into one of those brown bottles and handed it over. The collector immediately placed a seal over it, put that sealed bottle into a packet and sealed that packet as well and then put the packet into a FedEx box that he likewise sealed. To that point the protocol was followed and most of us know the routine. It’s just that with the FedEx office closed, the collector held onto it for 44 hours before sending it along. Once it arrived in Montreal, everything was completely in tact and sealed. There was no evidence that any of the seals had been tampered with or, by extension, that the sample was tainted.

That's pretty powerful stuff. But where major league baseball screwed up was in testing Braun at a time of day when the sample couldn’t be immediately shipped, though as Lester Munson, writing for ESPN, noted, Braun’s attorneys more or less debunked baseball’s claim that the FedEx office wasn’t open by highlighting several other FedEx offices nearby that were.

Because the sample sat in a sealed pouch for two days at the collector's house instead of in a lab, that raised more then enough doubt in the mind of the arbitrator on an issue that is fraught with doubts anyway. With the test discredited Braun’s suspension had to be overturned.

It's understandable how baseball got into this predicament. You combine a seemingly guilty looking player with a baseball hierarchy known more for missteps then efficient execution you end up with a recipe that yields a result pretty much in line with what they got. Yet if they had tested Braun a day earlier or maybe two days later, either of which would have been at a time when they could have found an open FedEx office, they could have nailed Braun and, in turn, looked serious about finally ridding the sport of drugs.

As it is, they look foolish instead. Maybe now Selig will understand that simply saying you have a world class drug testing program doesn’t make it so. As for ridding the sport of drugs, we’ll this is certainly a step backward. Unwittingly, by virtue of their own hubris, major league baseball has created the impression that they can’t be trusted. And that, really, is the sad legacy that Selig has written for the sport he claims to love.

All Star Indifference

What if they played an All Star game and nobody showed up? In large measure, that’s pretty much the theme of Major League Baseball’s version of the All Star game this year and for once I’m not talking about fan indifference, although I could be.

With seemingly half of the selected baseball All Stars begging off or otherwise ineligible because they pitched on the Sunday before a Tuesday game, Major League Baseball now has on its hand an All Star game in name only that will end up being played mostly by second and third tier players that have had a decent half season, no offense to Asdrubal Cabrera intended..

The union is of course defending the defections, despite their ever swelling numbers, as a matter of a number of individual circumstances combining at the same time to make the situation look worse than it really is. There’s no reason to doubt that explanation unless you take into account that when it comes to what’s best for the sport, the union has always led from the rear anyway.

The fact is, while there undoubtedly are some players that care about actually playing the All Star game, for many of them it’s an unneeded distraction, like Sunday dinner at the in-laws, that they’d would rather just avoid.

If there is a marker for this All Star game and the joke that it’s become, thy name is Derek Jeter. Citing the mental and physical exhaustion of chasing his 3,000th hit, Jeter begged off even attending any aspect of the festivities in Phoenix.

This is the sainted Derek Jeter, by the way, the one player we’re all reminded has always done the right thing when it comes to baseball, who has blown off the whole damn thing because the pressure of achieving a goal he was going to achieve sooner or later has left him positively exhausted. This is also the same Derek Jeter that was voted on the team and who otherwise stands completely healthy at the moment.

Jeter’s “decision” with a small “d” has created a little bit of controversy but not enough to get anyone too excited. And even it got any one other than the goofs running Fox Sports who are broadcasting the game terribly overheated, it wouldn’t be enough to change his mind anyway. With his usual flair for the uncontroversial, Jeter just shrugs his shoulders at the dust up, as he undergoes a personal calculus that probably concluded that Phoenix in July sounds about as exciting as Ann Arbor in the fall. True that.

If baseball had a real commissioner with real power who really cared about this mid-summer exhibition, he’d come out forcefully against Jeter’s actions and levy a heavy fine, assuming that real commissioner thought the All Star game carried some sort of transcendent importance.

But baseball has Boob Selig, a man who can wax philosophic about the enduring goodness of all that his sport represents but cannot actually do anything meaningful for the sport, just kind of shrug his shoulders as well and rationalizes it away like a parent whose kind just came home with a bad grade in Algebra. Never mind the message that Jeter is sending to the other so-called All Stars or the few fans that give a flying fig about the game. It’s not like baseball is imbued with symbolism anyway.

I don’t really want to pick on Jeter, the least hateful Yankee of the last 25 years. But I think it’s perfect that it’s a healthy Jeter, having just created a quaint feel-good story on the eve of the game by going 5-5 on Sunday and getting his 3000t0th hit on a home run, who is telling the rest of the world that there are much better ways to spend a Tuesday night in July then engaging in a meaningless exhibition game. Indeed there is. Tuesday night is the premier of the final season of Rescue Me, for instance.

And before anyone from Major League Baseball bothers to drop me an email to remind me that “this one counts” because the winner of the All Star gets home field advantage in the World Series, let me remind them that this fact is of only tangential relevance to fans in two cities that haven’t yet been identified anyway. Besides, since baseball went to awarding the home field advantage prize to the winner, there’s been absolutely no correlation between that prize and World Series success.

So back to Jeter and his 3,000 better ways to spend three days then in the 194 degree heat of Phoenix sweating out a potential haboob.

If Jeter giving baseball the middle finger serves as the flashpoint for reconsidering the actual playing of this annual snorefest, then it will have served a greater purpose and he may be elevated to the least hateful Yankee of the last 50 years.

But baseball is full of traditions that don’t make any sense so there’s no chance that Jeter’s inaction will have any lingering effect on a game that has long since lost whatever lingering effect it was supposed to have.

There may still be a few fans somewhere, anywhere, who still watch more than an inning or two of the thing, but let me know the next time there’s any water cooler talk about the game in your office and I’ll remind you that it was the first time, too.

The last time something interesting happened at an All Star game was 2002 when Boob Selig proved my point by ending a 7-7 game in the 11th inning and declaring the game a tie and sending everyone home. Outside of ESPN’s Buster Olney, I’m not sure anyone else even noticed or at least complained since it was, like 3 a.m. on the east coast when this “decision”, again with a small “d”, was made.

The truth is that the only people that really benefit from this All Star game are those among the 174 players selected who get some sort of bonus for achieving that half-honor. That’s fine. I’m not against baseball naming its All Stars, for whatever that means. It’s just that the game is less meaningful than an episode of The Bachelor.

But why pick on just baseball. If there’s anything worse than baseball’s all star game, it’s basketball’s. And even then, both of those games are positively riveting when compared to the low wattage output of the NFL’s Pro Bowl. But hey at least the Pro Bowl is not the Minor League All Star game, an oxymoron of such major proportions that they ought to just retire the term oxymoron here an now in honor of the minor leagues even naming All Stars or, as I like to call them, the best of all the players not good enough to play at the major league level.

It’s all harmless, I know and there are much bigger issues in the world of sports. But if baseball is going to interrupt its season year in and year out in this way and then tell me it’s for the fans, it’s worth letting them know that we’re on to their schtick.

Celebrate if you must, baseball, but I have the public on my side. The television ratings for the game have been trending down since 1988, with 2010 being the lowest rated All Star game ever. There’s no reason to think this year will be any different, what with Jeter decompressing in his penthouse. And worry not, fans, if Fox pulls the plug in the future. Somewhere in the can has to be a lost episode of The Search of the Next Elvira to replace it.

Someone Else with Money Problems

On the day that the Cleveland Indians announced the signing of 74-year old Orlando Cabrera to play, what? second base , came the item from Baseball Prospectus that it projects the Indians to finish at 72-90. The issues are completely related.

The Baseball Prospectus ratings are based on the rankings of each player on the team and their respective playing time in the major leagues. It then makes a projection on where that team will finish. While Cabrera being part of the Indians wasn’t part of that analysis, ask yourself whether it really matters.

I certainly wouldn’t begrudge the fine folks at Baseball Prospectus trying to introduce prediction theory to the masses. But in this case it’s wasted effort. Science isn’t really needed to predict that it will be another miserable Indians’ summer.

When the biggest headline in the off season is reserved for the signing of Cabrera you kind of just know this isn’t going to be your year. But if you needed more proof then you needn’t have looked any further than the interview Cabrera gave from Arizona in which he had an ace bandage wrapped around his right shoulder that was masking what looked to be a block of ice the size of a Buick LeSabre.

General manager Chris Antonetti could make it much easier on the team’s accounting department if he just has them hand over Cabrera’s an entire check now rather than in bi-weekly installments because the chance of Cabrera not coming down with a season ending injury during spring training is probably is far less than the chance that the Cavaliers could take the Lakers in a 7-game series.

I fully understand that spring training is all about optimism. It’s the time when dreamers can dream and we’re not supposed to utter the phrase “wait ‘til next year” for at least a few more months. But really, is there anything about the Indians at the moment that inspires optimism?

Actually, yes. For starters, when Cabrera comes up lame, it won’t cost the Indians all that much. Next, we could talk about the parcel of “prospects” that this team stockpiles like so many nickels and dimes, but doing so is to admit defeat in a sense. The prospects arrived via the usual route—the trade of a veteran on the verge of making more money than this ballclub is willing to pay.

But that actually gets us to the real point here and it’s the real reason to be optimistic. The Indians aren’t the St. Louis Cardinals.

Right now the Cardinals are dealing with a real Indians-type problem, a superstar who has dollar signs for eyeballs.

Albert Pujols is in his free agent season and when he and the Cardinals couldn’t reach a deal on the same day that the Indians signed Cabrera (oh, the irony), Pujols did what so many Indians players of the past have done—shut down negotiations until after the season. Cleveland fans know what that’s code for, don’t we?
Pujols, of course, left the door open that a deal could get done after the season. But that’s a game of chicken that usually doesn’t end well for the team. All this means of course is that the Cardinals face the unenviable choice of going all-in on this season by keeping Pujols around and trying to win it all or building for the ubiquitous future that never comes as a parade of Pujols-wannabes dot the roster for the next 10 or so years.

It’s actually refreshing in a way to see another team and its fan base go through the gut wrenching exercise where they curse short-sighted management and skinflint ownership for not tying a million ton millstone around its neck in the form of a contract that will eat up far more of the budget than any sane person would ever recommend.

That, really, is what St. Louis ownership is wrestling with at the moment. It’s almost ludicrous to imagine, but the sticking point in the negotiations is that the Cardinals feel like Pujols can scrape by on an average salary that puts him in the top 10 paid players in the league and Pujols and his agents feel like an average salary that puts him in the top 5 paid players in the league will better help him get through those pesky retirement years.

The Pujols problem, like the CC Sabathia problem, like the Cliff Lee problem, like the Manny Ramirez problem, like the Jim Thome problem, is really a major league baseball problem borne of the unbridled economic Wild West that it allows to exist.

It plays out almost perfectly when you consider the context of Pujols’ demands. According to the USA Today major league baseball salary database, the top 4 salaries belonged to, you guessed it, New York Yankees. The fifth highest salary belongs to a member of, you guessed it, the New York Mets.

But that only tells part of the story. The rest of the story is that what is skewing the numbers the most is the top major league salary of one Alex Rodriguez. His $33 million per season is $9 million more than the Yankees are paying Sabathia. If you eliminate Rodriguez’s salary from the mix, then the Cardinals and Pujols are, at best, a mere few million dollars per season off, irrespective of whether his salary is based on the average of the top 5 or the top 10 players.

The Yankees, in an insane race to overpay nearly anyone who can hit .290 or sport an ERA under 4.50, aren’t just driving the market for superstar salaries, they are the market. It is the reason that the Cardinals ultimately are likely to lose Pujols and for some reason commissioner Bud Selig, the worst commissioner of any sport ever, and the rest of the idiot owners in baseball don’t see anything wrong with it.

To drive home the point of how absolutely stupendously ridiculous this all is, it’s not like Pujols is exactly underpaid at the moment. This year he’s scheduled to make $16 million. Last year that would have put him in the top 20 overall. The difference between what the Cardinals want to pay Pujols and what Pujols wants amounts to about $3 million per season, which is the difference between the averages of the top 5 and the top 10 salaries even when you consider Rodriguez’s ridiculous salary. If you remove Rodriguez as some sort of outlier, then the two sides are really arguing about $1.5 million per year.

Now the devil can be in the details, meaning that the parties aren’t really talking about a one year contract. But according to sources, the number of years of an agreement isn’t the issue, just the yearly salary. Thus it really does boil down to a pittance, relatively speaking, in the difference between the sides.

Yet the Cardinals may very well lose their superstar over this and the Yankees or the Mets or perhaps the Red Sox will get fatter as a result. And in the process of course the salaries will be driven ever higher making it that much tougher for teams like St. Louis or Cleveland to ever compete on a level playing field.

So yes, again, there is reason for optimism in Cleveland. For once the fans don’t have to cope with the emotional toll of watching a homegrown superstar gut the team on his way out the door. But then again, that’s only because there aren’t any of those on the Cleveland roster at the moment and there don’t look to be any anytime soon. So there is that.

Lingering Items--Unfinished Business Edition

I’ve written several times about my disdain for the now-retiring Donald Fehr, the head of the major league baseball players’ union. That stems from his myopic view of his charge and the fact that he sold out the long-term health effects that steroids have for the near term riches demanded by the players he led.

I stand by all of it, and more. But I do owe Fehr an apology. I have said many times that he doesn’t give a damn about the good of the game, but I was wrong. How else to explain his retirement but that it is the ultimate gift to the good of the game?

Unquestionably, Fehr had a job to do and heading a union, any union, is one of the nation’s most thankless jobs. Most of your members are decent, hard working sorts who want nothing more than to do their jobs, get their paychecks and then go home to their families. It’s the subversive element, unfortunately, to whom guys like Fehr had to dedicate an inordinate amount of time. That can be draining.

But trying to keep the Milton Bradleys of the world in line is only part of the job. He, like Commissioner Bud Selig, is charged with being a caretaker of the game. Any union leader who doesn’t recognize that the health of the employer is the lynchpin to the riches the employees enjoy is part of the problem, not the solution. Not to get all political with anyone on this topic, but all the years of union greed in, pick the industry, coupled with weak and indifferent management just worried about today eventually comes back to haunt. Look at the auto industry.

It’s true, of course, that a greedy union leader needs a weak and compliant company executive on the other side to foster that greed. In Selig, Fehr had just the right stooge. It allowed Fehr to grow his power base and enhance his own status and that of the union. But it came at the price of the game’s soul. The steroids era of baseball is the blood on the hands of Fehr (and Selig) that he can never wash off.

Over the course of the next 20 or 30 years all of Fehr’s evil and cynical view of baseball will no longer permeate the game on a day-to-day basis. It will be relegated to the history books, written about in the same way the Black Sox scandal already is. But that won’t diminish the damage that could have been avoided by a more conscientious leader. Fehr, truthfully, was neither.

So here’s to Fehr, who can’t retire quickly enough. And with his departure some of the good of the game is on its way to being restored. The rest will have to wait Selig’s inevitable retirement.

**

The vultures are certainly circling around Cleveland Indians manager Eric Wedge these days. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can make a compelling case to keep him. Considering that Wedge really isn’t a polarizing figure, surely someone should be coming to his defense.

It hasn’t happened.

The depth of the disappointment with the Indians’ season to date is one of the reasons. So too is the manner in which this team loses each night. Usually, it’s the bullpen. Usually it’s a blown save. And this was a reputed strength going into the season?

And that, folks, is the nub of the issue. Indians fans are disappointed precisely because they thought the team was more a slightly used but very useful luxury car than a clunker with the odometer rolled back. There are many culprits to blame for the misguided mindset of the fans entering into the season, but the usual suspects are again the usual suspects.

One of general manager Mark Shapiro’s strength is his unbridled optimism. He can convince himself that the sun shines at midnight and the smell emanating from the septic tank is roses. He wears easily with the local and national media, precisely because he’s so specific when he’s so upbeat. The national media in turn, which means those that follow baseball from the comfort of a desk in New York, buy into the hook and conclude, without much further review, that much was accomplished and thus much should be achieved. Most of the local media is just as compliant. Well, much wasn’t accomplished and less has been achieved.

Those who follow this team with their heads and not their hearts weren’t impressed with Shapiro’s offseason. Sure, he didn’t stand pat with a team that appeared to be on the upswing, itself a major improvement over previous seasons. But the kinds of moves he made were the same kinds of moves he always makes: fliers. Shapiro is Fred Sanford without the beard. Always with an eye on a bargain, Shapiro has unrelenting faith that in every junk pile lays an unpolished gem. This is how he fills out the roster each season while waiting for Wedge to develop the talent that’s been drafted.

Wherever you come out on the Wedge issue in a vacuum, just know that Shapiro’s acquisition model is either seriously flawed or poorly executed, maybe a little of both. For it to really work, you have to have a really good eye for bargains and you have to have someone who can develop the talent he’s been handed.

Developing talent is far more art than science and finding unpolished gems happens about as often as you find a Van Gogh at a flea market. Shapiro has more than proven that his trips to the bargain bin usually yield junk. And in Wedge, Shapiro has one of the worst gem polishers in the league. As I sit here and write this I can’t think of one piece of raw talent that’s realized his potential under Wedge.

As the Dolans contemplate what to do about Wedge, it’s time for them, too, to better hold Shapiro accountable for the mess he helps create each season. Wedge is seriously flawed as a manager and his days are surely numbered. Shapiro, on the other hand, is a more complex issue. He’s like a lot of the young players he drafts, talented but unfocused. Without some serious re-tooling in his thinking and approach, however, the firing Wedge won’t accomplish much by itself. If this season has proven anything, it’s that the problems with this team aren’t surface level.

**

It’s nice to know that Shaquille O’Neal is excited to be coming to Cleveland. It demonstrates more than anything else that it isn’t the city that’s the problem, it’s the teams. But the fact that fans were worried about how O’Neal would react speaks volumes about this town’s collective inferiority complex.

It is helpful that O’Neal is excited about being here. He’s one of the bigger ass pains in the league when he isn’t happy. A pouting O’Neal is a worthless O’Neal.

Overall, though, the reaction to the trade has been somewhat mixed. No one seems to have come out and panned it but there are many that are indifferent to it, mainly because of O’Neal’s age. There are some that find the pairing of O’Neal with LeBron James as unusual if only because the Cavs are working hard to retain James and O’Neal is one of the league’s great vagabonds. Early in his career O’Neil opted out of his contract in Orlando as soon as he could and, by doing so, arguably became more of a global icon for all the years he spent in Los Angeles. The fear is that he’ll take James down that same path.

I’m not sure I see that as much of a risk. James follows his own path. Whether O’Neal is on the same team with him or not, James is well aware of his history. The chance that James will be influenced by O’Neal in that regard seems remote.

General Manager Danny Ferry, in his press conference announcing the trade, acted as if he was Phil Ivey at the World Poker Championships going all in because he had just been dealt two aces. To some I’m sure Ferry came across somewhat as a person trying to make a big splash one final time before James leaves town with O’Neal after next season.

My read on it was a little different, but perhaps it’s just my version of Shapiro-think. I see Ferry as sending a message, like John Hart in the early ‘90s, that when this team is finally ready he’s going to go out and get those final pieces. This next season, it’s O’Neal. In subsequent years, it will be the O’Neal equivalent. More than anything else, Ferry is trying to position himself as the kind of general manager that isn’t afraid to make a leap.

Professional golfer and NBC golf commentator Johnny Miller is fond of saying that it takes great courage to shoot a low score. Too many golfers, once they get a few under par, spend the rest of the round protecting that score rather than risking it all to get even lower. That’s where Ferry finds himself at the moment. He’s assembled a very good team. Tweaking around the edges is probably the way to protect what he has. It will certainly guarantee him a good score. But it takes real courage to make bold strokes to get the team from good to great and win the whole damn thing.

It’s been a long time since any team in Cleveland has had someone willing to think big. Credit Ferry and, while you’re at it, credit owner Dan Gilbert, a bold thinker in his own right.

**

With the death of Michael Jackson, you can’t help but think how much great music didn’t get made once he became totally unhinged. Which leads to this week’s question to ponder: How many inquiries do you think former Browns receiver Michael Jackson’s family got yesterday asking whether it was he who died?

Lingering Items--Juiced Edition

Yea, it matters…
There is a point at which fans become so jaded by the constant revelations of off-the-field shenanigans by those who play the sport that they’d just rather ignore it all. Just play the game. The revelations that baseball’s arguably most talented player and certainly its highest paid was a steroid abuser (and may be, still, who knows?) doesn’t seemed to have twanged the buds of the average fan.

I understand that sentiment. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about steroids and baseball as much as anyone. But that doesn’t mean that the onslaught of steroids allegations should just be swept away like the 2008 Cleveland Browns’ season. This stuff does matter far more than whether or not Eric Mangini painted the walls inside the Berea a shocking pink.

The steroids era, as it’s becoming known, has literally robbed baseball of its underlying integrity. Records have been established. Players and owners have been rewarded on the backs of a ticket paying public and the networks paying increasingly exorbitant broadcast rights fees. Part of the reason your cable bill is so high is because ESPN passes those fees right on to you. But far too much of those accomplishments and those riches have been earned under false pretenses. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.

It does make a difference if Barry Bonds owns the home run record and not Hank Aaron. It matters if a Roger Clemens exceeds the accomplishments of a Bob Feller or a Nolan Ryan. When the records and accomplishments of the sport’s icons fall to someone who used illegal means to do it, the fabric of the game begins to unravel.

In every sport cheaters are punished. If a high school or college team uses an ineligible player, the player is banned and the team forfeits the game. If the team won a championship, the banner is stripped and the record book expunged. But a major league baseball team winning games with players who are using performance-enhancing drugs aren’t punished in the least. Yet arguably those wins are far more in doubt than those of a college team using a player that got a “D” in a course but the professor reported it as a “C.”

It would be great if baseball could put the steroid era behind it. Everyone would breathe a sigh of relief. But ignoring the black mold metastasizing in the corner of the room because you’re too scared or tired or whatever to contemplate its ramifications isn’t the answer. The only way to address the problem is to clean it up for good. Rid the sport of the players whose performance was fraudulent. Force out the owners who hid in their luxury boxes in order to avoid confronting the seedy underbelly of their clubs. Rid the sport of the commissioner who fiddled why Cooperstown burned. Demonstrate true zero tolerance and not 10 strikes and “I’m sorry” or else face accepting the next inevitable scandal that could ultimately prove to be even worse.

We now return to our regular programming.

**

Stupid is as stupid does…

Problem, what problem?

In a nutshell, that’s essentially the position of Marvin Miller, the legendary architect of the absolute worst union in professional sports, the Major League Players Association. Wheeled out as if on cue every time there is a problem in baseball, the 91-year old Miller had plenty to say about the Alex Rodriguez situation and almost none of it is going to help.

Among the more controversial statements he gave to ESPN was that the union should never have bowed to public and congressional pressure to institute a drug testing program in the first place. In Miller’s view, there is absolutely no evidence that steroids actually enhance performance. Thus it is pure folly to test for them because all that ends up doing is causing a boat load of unintended consequences, the Rodriguez situation being just the most current example.

It would be easy to dismiss the comments of Miller as those of a doddering old fool still trying to look relevant. But Miller is no fool. He’s misguided, certainly, ill-informed, obviously, but absolutely nobody’s fool. He more than anyone else, is responsible for the establishment and adherence still to outdated horse-and-buggy thinking on almost any issue of relevance in baseball and these comments just perpetuate his antiquated thinking.

His ESPN interview created a veritable cornucopia of other misstatements and half-truths as well. Miller claimed rather boldly that there is no evidence that the use of steroids is even a health issue, pulling out the old “cigarettes cause far more damage and responsible for 400,000 deaths a year” as if that’s even a relevant comparison. In Miller’s world, steroids use has not been involved in “one documented death.”

That’s just Miller parsing for convenience of argument without bothering to check it for consistency. Claiming steroids hasn’t been a factor in several deaths is just plain false. For example, Lyle Alzado was 42 years old when he died of brain cancer. Alazado himself in his last days attributed his condition to his extensive misuse of steroids. There have been at least 5 pro “wrestlers” who have died in their 30s from various forms of coronary disease and all were abusers of anabolic steroids. The web site Athletes Against Steroids maintains a list of steroids-related deaths and notes, too, that most steroids-related deaths are not of high profile athletes and thus go mostly unreported. If Miller was being consistent, let alone genuine, then he’d have to say that cigarettes aren’t causing any deaths because no one is dying while taking a drag. It’s all that coronary disease and emphysema that’s really causing the deaths.

But even if Miller wants to play that game, it’s beyond question that the continued abuse of steroids has serious health consequences. You can Google “health effects of steroids” and find 486,000 entries to back that up. ESPN did an extensive series on the issue (see story here) that details the short and long-term adverse impact that steroid use has on an individual, both physically and psychologically. If Miller doubts the uncontroverted medical evidence, then he should be made to produce one scientific study to the contrary. He can’t.

Miller then trotted out the well-worn argument that drug testing is inherently unreliable because of the potential for false-positive results. This is a perfect example of a half-truth. What Miller doesn’t say is that the protocols of drug testing, particularly in professional sports, are so rigorous as to render false positives nothing more than a myth. Drug tests are conducted in phases. The initial test is more generalized and it is in that test where false positives may get reported. But any positive test in this phase is then submitted to a far more exacting test to eliminate the chance of a false positive. Ask Floyd Landis.

Personally, my favorite Millerism though was his statement that the union leadership was wrong to bow to the overwhelming pressure put on it by its own members to agree to random drug testing. According to Miller, “leadership can't just take a poll on what membership wants. You also have to judge whether this is in the best interests of the people you represent. If the entire membership voted unanimously to disband, would you do it?” In other words, just because the members want something doesn’t mean it’s in their best interests. And yes, by law actually, if the entire membership voted unanimously to disband, the union would disband, so there.

Miller always has been a polarizing figure in baseball. On the one hand his hard-nosed bargaining tactics advanced the cause of the players and, in the process, made the players’ union the strongest sports union. On the other hand, the next idea he has that’s in the best interest of baseball (as opposed to the best interest of an individual player) will be the first. It’s never been Miller’s agenda to further the interest of the sport, so it’s no surprise that he’s not doing so now. But to not appreciate how damaged the sport is by advocating for positions that would only further that damage may not make you a fool, but it does render you irrelevant.

See ya, Marvin. We’ll call you the next time your help is needed. And if the phone isn’t ringing, it’s us.

**

If only he had acted like he couldn’t speak English…

Somewhat lost in the Rodriguez affair was the news item that Houston Astros’ shortstop Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty on Wednesday to lying to congressional investigators about what he knew about steroids use in baseball. According to a report in the USA Today, Tejada admitted he lied when he told investigators in 2005 essentially that “I don’t know nothing about no stinking steroids.” Now Tejada awaits sentencing and is hoping against hope that probation is in his future.

What’s instructive about the Tejada situation is the simple fact that it underscores why investigating steroids use is so difficult. When George Mitchell undertook his investigation, the players’ union essentially told its members not to cooperate. That’s something they could get away with because Mitchell had no subpoena power and was not working under the color of law in order to compel cooperation.

But when a congressional investigator, working under the color of law and with subpoena power comes knocking, one is well advised not to dodge the questions or, as in the Tejada’s case, lie with impunity.

This is something that has to give pause to dear old Roger Clemens. Right now his testimony to Congress is under scrutiny and on that front, things aren’t going well. It’s one thing to damage your reputation by being exposed as a cheat. It’s a whole other matter to find your abscessed butt in a jail cell. Clemens may just see this all as another batter that he can send back to the bench with a series of fastballs. Sooner or later he’ll find out he was wrong.

**

A fool for a client…

Speaking of Clemens, this week a judge dismissed most of the defamation lawsuit that he filed against his former BFF, Brian McNamee. The dismissal was mostly on procedural grounds. The statements McNamee told congressional investigators, for example, are immune from a lawsuit. Most of the other statements McNamee made that weren’t otherwise immune were made in New York and thus if Clemens wants to sue him for those, he’ll have to re-file the case in New York.

There still is one count left in the lawsuit relating to statements McNamee allegedly made to Andy Pettitte about Clemens’ steroids use. If Clemens decides to continue to pursue that, he’ll be in the rather awkward position of having to depose his other BFF, Pettitte. The problem there is that Pettitte has already gone on record as vouching for McNamee’s credibility. Be careful what you ask for, Roger.

My guess is that this lawsuit will die the natural death it deserves. It was filed in the wake of the storm surrounding the Clemens allegations and was meant to deflect attention by portraying Clemens as . Clemens and his attorney probably never really intended to pursue it to a conclusion because doing so would put the entire Clemens family in play. But then again, Clemens has proven time and again that as a family man, he was a good pitcher so anything’s possible.

**

This Bud’s for you…

It’s been a busy week for The Worst Commissioner in the History of Organized Sports, Bud Selig. When the Rodriguez story broke, he gave his usual furrowed brow look of concern and talked, half-heartedly, about possibly suspending Rodriguez.

But that was never a viable option. There simply is no mechanism in place to suspend Rodriguez for misconduct occurring 8 years ago and Selig knew that even when he initially made the statements. That’s why he almost immediately backed down from that threat and simply left it as is by doing what Selig does best, wringing his hands while scolding Rodriguez as if he were Selig’s 16-year old kid and he had just creased a right corner panel on the family sedan. That had to hurt.

Frankly, Selig moralizing to Rodriguez will be about as effective as anything else Selig as done throughout his slumbering tenure as commissioner. The truth is that the revelations about Rodriguez say at least as much about Selig’s reign as they do about Rodriguez. If Rodriguez is telling the truth (a risky assumption, I know) that the culture of just a few years ago fostered his drug use, then how on earth could Selig not be clued in to that? The only way he could have avoided it was, essentially, by deliberately avoiding it. But deliberate ignorance hardly erases the underlying acts. If it did then a refusal to to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers win another Super Bowl would mean it didn’t happen. If only….

What’s truly amazing about this whole situation is that despite the fact that the longest, darkest and most shameful period ever visited upon professional baseball has occurred under Selig’s watch, those that employ him don’t seem to much care. During that time, all the owners have done is continue to elevate Selig’s status and salary without even once trying to hold him the least bit accountable. Maybe it’s because they know they are just as culpable. A band of brothers, indeed.

By this point, Selig’s become the sports equivalent to Ken Lay, the former (and now deceased) CEO of Enron. While essentially overseeing a criminal enterprise, each disclaimed either knowledge or intent and both profited handsomely. I guess for his sake it’s a good thing that Congress has its hands full with the banks at the moment.

**
There was an item in the Plain Dealer on Friday where several Cleveland Indians, including Cliff Lee, essentially gave Rodriguez and others a pass for their steroids abuse. The players, too, apparently are tired of this whole mess and just want to move on. Thus this week’s question to ponder: Would Lee still feel the same way if he had lost a perfect game by giving up a home run to a player who later admitted he was on steroids?

Right Nickname, Wrong Reason

A few weeks ago, former New York Yankees manager Joe Torree caught some heat from the local New York newspapers for supposedly telling Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, in the context of a book Verducci just released about the Yankees that Alex Rodriguez’s teammates sometimes referred to him as A-Fraud.

It turns out that righteous indignation of those who disagreed with that characterization was a tad premature. Over this past weekend Sports Illustrated spilled the beans on Rodriguez’s use of steroids. On Monday, Rodriguez told ESPN it was true and that, in fact, his illegal drug use went on from 2001-2003. That means, at the very least, his MVP of 2003 was indeed a fraud along with any and all of his accomplishments during those years.

On some level, this “news” falls into the category of dog bites man. There have been too many of these same sad, pathetic stories about the sport’s pseudo superstars for this “news” to qualify as anything more than just another example of a once-decent reputation being tossed onto an ever-expanding scrap heap. But on other more significant levels, the revelation that the highest paid ballplayer did more than just dabble in steroids is more damaging to baseball’s flagging reputation than the Mitchell Report of a few years ago.

Maybe you can take all of this as a sign that the baseball season has officially begun. It used to commence with the pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training. Now it begins with the latest report of someone testing positive for steroids. But in truth, the Sports Illustrated report and the Rodriguez-come lately admissions have already rendered another baseball season as suspect. Explain to me again why baseball commissioner Bud Selig is worth $17.5 million a year?

It’s hard to know how much of a steroid abuser Rodriguez really was or still is. In the interview with ESPN, Rodriguez admitted he lied to Katie Couric and CBS when he claimed last year he never used the drugs. You don’t suddenly regain credibility by admitting you’re a liar. It may be that his drug use only covered the period 2001-2003, but we’ll never really know unless he’s forced, again, to face another outing of a positive drug test.

There is no question that Rodriguez hopes that the ESPN interview will help salvage what’s left of his reputation. He certainly tried his best to come across as contrite and sincere. But let’s not forget he also came across as sincere in the Couric interview with 60 Minutes. All that means is that he’s a 6-tool player, having established his latest skill, the ability to fake sincerity.

Besides, why should anyone believe that this time he’s telling the truth? It’s not as if he came clean of his own volition. He had no choice. Examine his words in his interview with ESPN. He claims he stopped using steroids in 2003 after he hurt his neck in spring training and had a chance to take a measure of his life. Where’s he been for the last six years then? At any point prior to Sunday he could have taken the brave step forward, admitted his wrongful conduct and pledged to work on eradicating steroids at every level of sports. That would have bought him some good will. The fact that he did not is the height of selfishness and not, as he suggested, the act of a person who has grown beyond the immaturity and selfishness of his youth.

Without giving Rodriguez any sort of a pass on this, it is true that he is far from the only responsible person here. Start with the $17.5 million man, Selig. The fact that this stench still lingers is all the proof anyone needs that he is abjectly unqualified to be the commissioner of anything more complicated than motorized bar stool racing. Selig’s inability to control this situation, to exercise the kind of leadership that a salary like he earns commands, is the major reason why this issue hangs around like an out of work brother-in-law. Selig simply refused to stand up to the union and his fellow owners and shut the game down for as long as necessary until his sport was not only clean but the model for every other spot.

And speaking of the union, they are every bit as complicit at soiling the game in their misguided effort to protect drug abusers. This issue has never been about due process or Constitutional rights. Hiding under the flimsy protection of a collective bargaining agreement that has been slanted in their favor for far to long, from the union’s perspective this has always been about allowing abusers like Rodriguez to enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of their talents in order to raise the salaries of everyone else in the sport. If that means sacrificing the long-term health of the players they claim to represent, so be it. If that means placing every game and every accomplishment under a skeptical eye, so be it. It’s not their job, after all, to care about the game only the players.

It’s almost laughable that the union, particularly Donald Fehr and Gene Orza, are coming under scrutiny now as a result of the Rodriguez matter. These two have been Exhibits A and B for all the wrong reasons for far too long. But like cockroaches scurrying under a newly shined light, the Rodriguez affair has turned into an every-man-for-himself exercise.

To understand this aspect, it is necessary to also understand how the Rodriguez test results came about in the first place.

In 2003, (yes, 2003 and not 1974) baseball still wasn’t punishing steroids users. An agreement was in place that if more than 5% of the active players tested positive for banned substances, then baseball could implement punitive measures against players testing positive in subsequent years.

To what should be no one’s surprise, well in excess of 5% did indeed test positive in 2003. Let’s remember, too, that the penalties that went into effect were hardly much of a deterrent. It wasn’t until Congress got involved in the wake of the Mitchell Report that baseball and the union, under the pointed threat of losing their precious anti-trust exemption, toughened their program. Once the 2003 season ended and the number of positive tests confirmed, Orza, the union’s chief administrator, had no reason to save the test results. But before he could destroy them, the federal government, investigating BALCO and Barry Bonds, had them subpoenaed. The union had no choice but to turn them over or risk even bigger problems. From there, eventually, the Rodriguez revelations were borne.

Interestingly, though, major league baseball doesn’t seem all that concerned that their number one marquee player got that way in part through steroids. They seem far more concerned that the union didn’t destroy the results in the first place. It’s akin to Tony Soprano yelling at Silvio Dante because a police officer found a body he disposed of. Focus not on the underlying crime but on the shoddy job you did covering it up.

Baseball officials also seem a little ticked that Orza allegedly was tipping off players, including Rodriguez, weeks in advance of drug tests back then. Orza denies the claim, as he’s done before, but really in context how is that denial even credible? All of this is just noise drowning out the real problem anyway. At some point someone will step out of self-protection mode and actually take not just responsibility but ownership for solving this problem.

Beyond the players, Selig and the Union, let us also not forget about the complicit owners like George Steinbrenner and his idiot son Hank as well as the Texas Rangers’ chief windbag, Tom Hicks. It was Hicks who gave Rodriguez the outrageous salary in the first place that supposedly put so much pressure on poor Rodriguez that he felt a need to turned to illegal drugs in order to live up to the demands of his new found riches. It was George Steinbrenner who then traded for Rodriguez after his fraudulent 2003 season and Hank who then re-upped with team Rodriguez for another 10 years at the modest sum of $27.5 million a season.

Its owners like the Steinbrenners and Hicks who helped create this culture in the first place by sending a message that other-worldly accomplishments, by however means achieved, were worth outlandish salaries. If it had only impacted their teams that would have at least contained the problem. But it didn’t. It’s a culture that took hold throughout the league and has created the economic disparities that exist today between teams.

It’s instructive that the Yankees official word on this is only that they are disappointed in Rodriguez. That’s a pretty muted response considering they were essentially defrauded not once but twice by Rodriguez and are still on the hook to him for well over $225 million over the next 8 years or so. It’s as if they had just lost millions to Bernie Madoff and just shrugged their shoulders. As a franchise, the Yankees have no convictions so wagging a public finger and scooting this under the rug seems appropriate for them.

But if the Yankees really were disappointed, they’d part ways with Rodriguez irrespective of the cost and without fear that any other team would sign him. Until the owners, collectively, take a stand against this, it will continue. They need to understand that as caretakers of the game, players like Rodriguez, Clemens and Bonds, have lost the privilege of the major leagues. They have abused the gifts they were born with and shown nothing but disdain for the fans and the sport itself.

Because this is America, however, Rodriguez will get his second, third, fourth and fifth chances and maybe a dozen more until he demonstrates that he can no longer hit home runs. But if fans really want to give Rodriguez the chances he doesn’t deserve, they ought to at least first demand something in return. Rodriguez admitted his drug use basically covered three seasons. Forfeiting his salary for the next three years and instead directing the money be placed in a foundation dedicated to the sole proposition of educating and training the youth of America on the pitfalls of drug use would be a good start.

Another Chance to Get It Wrong

Major League Baseball is at the forefront of professional sports in ridding its game of illegal drugs, just ask them. Rob Manfredi, executive vice president in charge of labor relations said as much in commenting on what he termed further improvement to what already is professional sport’s best drug testing policy, at least according to Manfredi.

What prompted this most recent self-congratulatory nod was the announcement that Major League Baseball and the players’ union had reached still another agreement regarding its drug testing policy. As reported by ESPN.com, Manfredi said “Going into this negotiation, the commissioner was 100 percent correct that we had the best program in professional sports. These changes just solidify that kind of premier leadership position in my view.”

Hardly. Under the guise of strengthening the current drug testing program, the players union, under the misguided leadership of Donald Fehr, once again outbargained management by using Commissioner Bud Selig’s paper tiger of threat to suspend players named in the Mitchell Report against him by giving MLB the sleeves off their vest. Fehr ensured that no player named in the Mitchell Report would be subject to punishment. To get that concession all they did was have to negotiate around the fringes of a seriously-flawed drug problem that only its authors think is world class.

Nonetheless, ESPN’s major league baseball shill Buster Olney bought the party line when he said on Friday that only an idealist would continue to find problems with baseball’s drug testing policies. If by idealist Olney means anyone with a brain, then a bunch of us are guilty as charged. Olney and his ilk may be weary from the distraction of having to report about baseball’s drug problems, but that is no excuse for not holding baseball accountable for its thumb-sucking on this issue.

As for Manfredi, he probably never really read the Mitchell Report or the various and sundry articles and opinions of real experts who have an opinion that if not 180° different than Manfredi’s is at least 178. See, that’s the problem with Major League Baseball. It’s never shown leadership under Selig in much of anything, particularly when it comes to ridding its sport of drugs. Virtually every action it has taken of any consequence regarding performance-enhancing drugs, including this most recent amendment to the policy, has been under pressure from an outside source. Left to its own indifference, MLB would have simply let Fehr continue to control the dialogue. It’s what it did until Congress showed up.

Undeniably, the latest iteration of baseball’s drug policy is an improvement, but that’s only because it would have been impossible to take a step backward. As I noted just a few months back (see here), when the denizens of baseball first appeared before Congress after the Mitchell Report was issued, Selig took a rather meaningless “bucks stops here” approach given how performance-enhancing drugs were allowed to flourish under his watch. He didn’t so much fall on his sword as shrug his shoulders, which is his wont.

At that Congressional hearing, Selig and Fehr were grilled about some of the more obvious flaws in their program, a few of which they addressed in the new agreement, but not fully. For example, although baseball began banning and testing for amphetamines in 2006, they opened up a therapeutic use exemption that the players are now exploiting with impunity. In 2006, 28 players were able to find their version of Samatha Stevens’ Dr. Bombay to write them a prescription for Ritalin, the amphetamine of choice among discriminating drug users in baseball. In 2007, that number jumped to 107, a number which Congressman John Tierney of Massachusetts labeled as eight times the general population.

Manfredi, responding to that report, seemed flummoxed as much as clueless, claiming he had no idea why the number would jump so precipitously. If Manfredi is really that unsure of how that kind of jump could occur, then he seems uniquely unfit to be in charge of labor relations at the local Dairy Mart, let alone all of Major League Baseball.

Surprisingly, the latest amendment to the drug testing policy didn’t even address this issue. Here’s predicting that Manfredi will be equally surprised when the number of players using the therapeutic-use exemption continues to skyrocket in relation to the additional drugs banned under the amended policy.

One area that the parties did address were the embarrassingly low number of off-season drug tests that occurred, although slightly. Until this latest deal, baseball was permitted to conduct only 60 total off-season drug tests among the 1300 or so players. No need to call the MIT math department to run the calculations on the odds of being tested under that formula. Under the amended program, that number jumps to 375 tests in a three-year period, or 125 a year. That basically doubles the number off yearly off-season tests, theoretically doubling the odds of a player getting tested. That all sounds good but when you’re starting with 60 tests, doubling it is hardly marked improvement. The chance of being tested in the off-season still isn’t likely to scare any drug-using player straight.

Another key flaw in the previous drug testing program that was addressed, although not completely, was the fact that it was conducted in-house with the ability of either management or the union to fire the supposedly independent administrator at any time. Baseball still didn’t move the program to an independent outside agency, as recommended in the Mitchell Report, but did at least protect its administrator by adding a “just cause” provision before his removal by either side.

It sounds good, but in reality all the union needs to do in order to dump the administrator for one more to its liking is to trump up a reason to get rid of the administrator that goes beyond the current standard of not liking the cut of his jib. How hard can that be? After all, this is the same sport that pretty much accepted that the Indians’ Paul Byrd needed his dentist to prescribe for him human growth hormone in order to address a pituitary problem. Apparently Byrd’s gynecologist was unavailable.

But before we get too overridden with cynicism, let’s remember that baseball and its union decided that each of the top 200 draft prospects in the annual amateur draft would be subject to drug testing. If a player tests positive, he’s eligible for selection. If a player refuses, he can’t be selected. Under that rubric, why would a player ever refuse? Presumably, a positive test might impact a prospect’s draft position, but remember you’re dealing with major league teams here. Character, including prior drug use, is much further down the list of considerations in drafting or signing a player, above legal blindness, well below on base percentage or velocity.

Not surprisingly, the experts aren’t satisfied with baseball’s latest drug turn. According to the Associated Press, Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s committee that determines the banned substances list sad “This still falls significantly short of the mark, no matter what internal bureaucracy they've patched together.” Wadler was particularly critical of the fact that baseball’s policies still do not call for blood testing for human growth hormone and for not turning the testing over to an outside agency.

But Wadler, too, is apparently just some wide-eyed idealist because if Major League Baseball says it has the best testing program in professional sports than it must be true. So drinks all around. Kudos to Selig, Manfredi and Fehr. It is cause for celebration, particularly if you’re a major league ballplayer. They should be gratified to know that while their leaders may not have materially improved their regrettable history with coddling drug use in their sport, they did manage to insure that as long as they’re in charge, every player will remain a drug suspect.

Hitting Rock Bottom

The theater of the absurd taking place in Congress on Wednesday in the form of the hearings over whether Roger Clemens did or did not use steroids and human growth hormone has, if nothing else, made the perfect coda for what has been one of the more interesting off-seasons in the history of major league baseball.

It started mostly with the issuance of the so-called Mitchell Report, the culmination of a lengthy investigation into baseball’s steroids era. Beyond confirming essentially rampant widespread steroids use across the baseball spectrum, it also shone a light on the seamy underside of the day to day workings of the average major league baseball locker room. Whatever you might think of former Clemens best friend forever Brian McNamee or New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, the fact that these two had ready and open access to the players for years is pretty damning evidence in and of itself how tolerant baseball management was of the seedy way in which its business was actually conducted behind the scenes.

One of the more interesting revelations from McNamee’s testimony on Tuesday was a comment he related from David Cone in the late ‘90s. Cone was then pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays and was their player representative. According to McNamee, Cone told him that the owners weren’t all that interested in testing for steroids, just that they wanted to appear interested.

It’s hard to know, assuming Cone made the comments, whether or not he actually believed that to be the case. But with the huge benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it sure looks like Cone was correct. Baseball both before and under the weak leadership of its worst commissioner ever, Bud Selig, clearly buried their heads in the sand on the steroids issue and their way too late commissioning of the Mitchell Report does little to negate its culpability in that regard.

Selig and the owners can pat themselves on the back all they want about how far they’ve come, but the truth is that they still have far to go. There still are flaws in baseball’s drug testing program and the fact that the owners are not now nor have they ever been willing to draw a definitive line in the sand with the union to get an unassailable program, even to the point of taking a strike if necessary, is really all you need to know about baseball’s commitment to rid itself of drugs.

This isn’t to let the union off the hook whatsoever, either. Donald Fehr, under the specter of protecting individual privacy, has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the owners on achieving a flawless and comprehensive drug program. In truth, he was protecting the players’ rights to parlay their illegal drug use into bigger and bigger contracts. Fehr’s conduct at every phase, from repeatedly refusing to discuss the issue meaningfully at the bargaining table to instructing the players not to cooperate in Mitchell’s investigation, is all you really need to know about the union’s commitment to rid the game of drugs.

In the meantime, while the powers that be have played their wink-and-a-nod game with the integrity of their sport, the collateral damage continues to mount. The one person I felt truly sorry for on Wednesday was the Clemens family former nanny. To bolster a claim that he supposedly was not at a party hosted by Jose Canseco in 1998 when steroids were discussed, Clemens sought out the nanny to back him up. Though he hadn’t spoken to her at all since 2001, he spoke to her recently, apparently to test her recollection that indeed Clemens was not there. Committee chairman Henry Waxman raised the issue that Clemens conduct in this regard seemed a tad inappropriate. As Waxman said, the proper thing would have been to turn over her name to the committee and let them interview her first, implying, correctly, that Clemens may having been trying to coach the witness.

Though this whole party angle is mostly meaningless, it provides incredible insight to what ultimately is likely to sink Clemens—his hyper sense of bravado. Clemens submitted an affidavit that he was never at the party. He then testified similarly several times until finally hedging later. Of course, he had to hedge when it was discovered that Clemens’ family was at the party. Clemens then offered that perhaps he stopped by briefly to drop them off and then pick them up. Ok, so he was at the party.

And that’s been the pattern throughout this mess with Clemens. He speaks in haughty, definitive tones but then hedges later. He claimed, for example, that he “worked his butt off” (an unfortunate metaphor if ever there was one) and that this unparalleled work ethic is the reason for his success, not shortcuts. In another breath, he admits to shortcuts like a regimen of B12 injections and to popping the painkiller idocaine as if they were tic tacs. He told 60 Minutes that he was advised not to talk to Mitchell when Mitchell asked to interview him but testified that he was never told Mitchell wanted to speak with him. He claims he was raised in a strict drug-free family but didn’t seem particularly outraged at the fact that McNamee administered human growth hormone to Clemens’ wife. He appears to vouch for the credibility of his latest best friend forever Andy Pettitte but then says that Pettitte obviously is mistaken when he claims that Clemens told him that he was using human growth hormone. And on and on it went.

The posturing of the various congressmen during the hearing also was interesting with some on the side of Clemens, others on the side of McNamee. It was interesting mostly because it wasn’t a time for anyone to take sides in the first place. Assuming that a congressional hearing was necessary to resolve the he said/she said allegations of the two protagonists, a mighty big assumption, the only side anyone should have been on was the truth. But just as it does with most of what it does these day, Congress again lost sight of the objective.

While it is virtually impossible at this point to actually prove Clemens took steroids and human growth hormone, it is instructive nonetheless to point out that if the Mitchell Report and McNamee, by proxy, is wrong on this point, it’s the only thing it has been wrong about thus far. As Representative Elijah Cummings asked somewhat rhetorically at the hearing, why would McNamee be truthful about Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, for example, both of whom confirmed McNamee’s allegations, and be untruthful about Clemens? Clemens, not surprisingly, didn’t have an answer, probably because there isn’t a good one.

The hearing was a bit of a battle royale between Clemens and McNamee but it’s unclear and probably unlikely that it will ever come to full resolution. Surely one of the two committed perjury and even if Clemens’ inconsistencies point the finger more toward him than McNamee, the chances that this ultimately becomes a criminal matter seem rather slim at this point. Where this issue will be decided, to the extent it hasn’t been already, is in the court of public opinion. And while some may have been persuaded one way or the other by today’s testimony, frankly both Clemens and McNamee came off as losers.

McNamee really has been nothing more than a glorified groupie to Clemens, Pettitte and the others who he “helped.” His usefulness in that regard now thoroughly compromised forever, he’s been discarded like so many other groupies who have come before him and is acting out not partly motivated by revenge. There’s nothing honorable in what he did then and certainly nothing particularly honorable in what he’s doing now. Remember, this is a guy whose initial default was to lie about his involvement in this whole drug mess in the first place. He only started squealing, like they all do, when the heat was closing in.

Clemens in many ways is just as dysfunctional. His dogged and unrelenting pursuit of pitching perfection blinded him to what was proper and what was right. If he didn’t know about McNamee’s little side business, then it was convenient and deliberate ignorance. If he tolerated his own wife’s use of human growth hormone, then he’s a hypocrite to boot. Clemens may have been more media friendly than Barry Bonds, but there is precious other little difference between the two. He is right in one regard, he’ll never get his reputation back nor does he deserve to.

As for major league baseball itself, it can’t act like this never happened simply by congratulating itself on the completion of the Mitchell Report. Baseball has an integrity problem that is no longer just a mile wide. It’s now clear it’s a mile deep as well. There is much it can do to rectify the situation, but acting as if this is all now in the past isn’t one of them. Baseball has now reached rock bottom. It’s time it admitted it and sought help.

Druggies

Blame it on the law of unintended consequences.

By naming names in the report he prepared for Major League Baseball on the use of performance enhancing drugs, former Senator George Mitchell unwittingly turned much attention away from the long-term, mostly ignored drug problems that still plague baseball to this day and toward figuring out exactly what was flowing through those needles that found themselves stuck to Roger Clemens’ butt.

And now, of course, a veritable cottage industry has arisen almost over night in terms of figuring out who’s telling the truth in the on-going soap opera between Clemens and his former best friend and personal trainer, Brian McNamee. Clemens doesn’t deny being a drug abuser, only that the abused drugs were steroids. He admits to downing Vioxx, a now discredited prescription pain reliever, as if they were Skittles and was regularly shot with Lidocaine, a prescription anesthetic. His trainer, under the threat of going to jail if he didn’t tell the truth, claims otherwise.

It’s an interesting debate that will probably decide the ultimate fate of Clemens’ legacy, but it is mostly a sideshow, which is a shame. The real issue is why baseball still won’t come to grips with the full scope of its drug problem.

On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held another hearing on steroids in baseball, a follow up of sorts to Mitchell’s report this past December. Commission Bud Selig, as expected, fell on his sword and adopted a mostly “the buck stops here” attitude, an approach that was convenient but meaningless given the simple fact that the drug culture flourished for years and years under his watch. Union president Donald Fehr, on the other hand, hedged a bit when trying to do the same but mostly came across as an ill-informed boob with little concern about the long-term health effects of the union members he claims to represent.

There was enough to titillate the average fan when a fair amount of the hearing was spent on Clemens, Miguel Tejada and the lengths to which San Francisco management went to protect its money tree, Barry Bond. But another focus of the hearings garnering a bit less attention was the flaws in baseball’s existing drug policies, despite Selig’s continued insistence that the programs are world class. Hardly.

Representative John Tierney of Massachusetts, for example, used the hearing as an opportunity to shed light on the issue of amphetamines. The back story is that amphetamine use was open and notorious in baseball (and probably most sports) for decades. In 2006 baseball finally outlawed their use and began testing for them. At the same time, however, it created a “therapeutic-use” exemption, meaning that any player who could con a doctor into writing a note could continue to use prescription amphetamines without penalty. The diagnosis of choice has been Attention Deficit Disorder and the drug of choice Ritalin.

In the first year of amphetamine testing, 28 players received the exemption, which basically mirrors the general population. But for reasons that neither Selig nor Fehr could explain, that figure ballooned to 107 the next year a figure that Tierney said was now eight times the general population. Selig did submit that they were trying to figure it out. The question, as always, is how hard.

In a story in Wednesday’s New York Times, Tierney expressed his frustration that Congress shouldn’t have to keep holding hearings in order to get baseball to address these problems. But if Tierney was frustrated coming out of the hearing, one wonders how he must have felt after reading the Times story in which Rob Manfred, baseball’s vice president in charge of labor relations, essentially downplayed the whole issue by saying that the Commissioner’s office, meaning Selig, really wasn’t all that concerned, even as Selig seemed to say otherwise. Added Manfred, “nobody knows why it jumped.”

Really? Nobody can figure that out? Maybe Manfred and Selig need to think outside the box and consider the crazy notion that it has something to do with addicted players finding a loophole in a poorly-crafted policy and driving a truck through it. Getting a doctor to write a note isn’t exactly the hardest thing to do. Ask the guy on the loading dock who bruised his finger at work and got the doctor to excuse him from work for two weeks. Better yet, ask Paul Byrd.

If that doesn’t illuminate it for Manfred and Selig, they should try talking with Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an anti-doping expert and internist, who points out in the Times story that Ritalin and the like help a person concentrate while also masking pain and increasing energy and reaction time. In other words, it jumped because players continue to crave a chemical edge and now have found a sanctioned way to make that happen. Duh.

But as reprehensible as baseball’s casual indifference is toward the four-fold increase in one year in players who suddenly have ADD, more galling is their continued insistence that their drug testing policies have been effective. The therapeutic exemption is just one flaw. The fact that baseball only conducts a total of 60 unannounced off-season drug tests among its more than 1300 players is another. As Rep. Diane Watson of California said at the hearing, based on pure statistical probabilities, it’s unlikely that the average player would ever be subjected to such a test.

Selig said the right thing, as he usually tries to do, that baseball is committed to a program that requires “adequate” unannounced testing, but he knows full well that any such agreement must be bargained with the union. Selig has never been able to adequately stand up to Fehr on virtually any issue and nothing Fehr said at the hearing suggests he will be any more agreeable now. The truth is that Selig and his fellow owners lack the will to place the integrity of their sport and the health of their players above their own economic interests. If it comes down to shutting down the sport in order to gain a meaningful, meaty drug testing policy, everyone, including Selig and Fehr, knows damn well which interest will prevail.

Another major flaw in the program, as highlighted by John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency in a story in the USA Today, is baseball’s continued insistence that it run its testing program in-house. “Professional baseball's response to Sen. Mitchell's report is baffling,” Fahey said in a statement, according to the story in USA Today. “To suggest that it might continue to keep its anti-doping testing program in-house ... is demeaning to Sen. Mitchell and the congressional committees who view doping as a serious threat to public health.” As Fahey points out, an in-house program ultimately lacks accountability and helps foster the problems that are just now coming to light, such as the unexplained increase in therapeutic-use exemptions.

But Fahey reserved his biggest criticism for what he called baseball’s “blatant disregard for the truth” when it comes to testing for HGH, human growth hormone. Selig and Fehr continue to insist that there is no validated urine test for HGH, which is technically true. However, according to Fahey, there is a reliable blood test for HGH and, more importantly, the taking and storing of blood now for future testing is widely in use. The problem, of course, is that baseball’s testing policies do not allow for the drawing of blood let alone for punishment tomorrow for a positive test yesterday.

Left to their own accord from here on out, baseball likely would do nothing more than it’s done already and, if they could get away with it, would probably rescind half of what they have done. When it does move, it’s not because it’s for the good of the game but because a bayonet, in the form of the threatened repeal of their anti-trust exemption, is pointed at their eye sockets.
If you see a pattern in all of this, you’re not alone. Selig and Fehr like to talk a good game but their actions speak much more loudly. They want to appear to be tough on drugs but lack the philosophical conviction, not to mention the political will, to do what it would really take to ensure the public that their sport is both honest and clean. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, it’s neither.

Starting from Scratch

It would have been a surprise if the fans really did give a damn.

The relative lack of activity in the chat rooms, the various stories on fan reaction on television and in the newspapers all speaks to a huge wave of fan indifference about Senator George Mitchell’s report on the steroids era in baseball. The voice of one fan in particular, I think, well summed up what really is the issue. He didn’t care because he already figured most baseball players were cheating anyway.

And isn’t that, in the end, the most damning indictment of all? If fans truly think that the entire sport is tainted, what’s the point?

When the dust settles on all of it, it is rather doubtful, actually, that most fans will still hold the view that nearly every player was on the juice. But what no one can escape is the fact that the caretakers of major league baseball—the owners, the club executives, the players, their union, the agents, the national and local media—did such a lousy job with the privilege they were given, that it threatened the very foundation of the sport itself.

In my view, there really is only one answer: take a bulldozer to the sport and start from scratch. Kick out everyone and anyone who in any way is associated with the steroids era. Ban them from baseball permanently, like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose. And when I say everyone and anyone, I mean just that: the owners who still sit idly by while the likes of George Steinbrenner and his ilk whose insane quest to buy a championship year after year created such an economic upheaval that it encouraged players to cheat in order to grab a bigger pay day; every club executive, from the general managers to the towel attendants, who put their heads in the sand while the players they pampered, purchased, traded for or signed seemed to get bigger as if they were inflated by an air hose; every manager or coach who stayed cloistered in his office in order to avoid seeing the ugly realities taking place in his club house; any player who took the stuff and any player who looked the other way while his teammate was getting an injection; union leaders like Donald Fehr, Gene Orza and the rest of their minions who intentionally blocked a meaningful drug testing program until Congress threatened action; the reporters who were in those locker rooms every day, saw what was happening, heard the whispers and refused to do their jobs because they feared their access to the players would dry up.

You see, the Mitchell report is far more than just the names of the 70 or 80 ball players whose arrogance clashed with their stupidity when they not only associated with but actually befriended the various drug dealers and suppliers whose only job was to give them an unfair edge. The report is about all of us who actually find, or used to anyway, meaning in the sport itself now having that stripped away from them. Not only is it a virtual certainty that whatever results you may have seen on the field over the last 10-15 years are suspect, but there’s little comfort that anyone associated with baseball has the guts or the wherewithal to ensure we don’t have another 10-15 years of similar uncertainty, Commissioner Bud Selig’s predictable hand-wringing notwithstanding. That’s why you have to start from scratch.

Consider the fall out of just the last few days. In this corner you had the Roger Clemens camp, but not necessarily Clemens himself, issuing denial after denial, expressing outrage after outrage, and questioning the fairness of the process. But his attorney, Rusty Hardin, without any sense of irony, claimed his client had been denied a fair shake while hiding from the fact that Clemens was given every opportunity to participate in the investigation and refused, just like every other player, preferring instead to shout from the cheap seats after the fact. It’s the coward’s way out because it avoids actually having to tell the truth at the moment of truth. You can bet the mortgage that Clemens won’t pursue legal action even while claiming he was slandered because that, too, would force him to testify under oath about the allegations, putting him squarely in the sites of a perjury charge if he lied.

In another corner sat the pathetic talking heads of ESPN seemingly spending more time attacking the credibility of the accusers than in focusing on the overall message. In other words, it was just more of the same. When it is nut-cutting time, they’ll jump on the side of the players in order to ensure they can still do their jobs on a daily basis.

What they can’t hide from, though, is the fact that this story didn’t break on a single day. It was an era, for goodness sakes. It was literally years in the making. I don’t care how lousy of a reporter Peter Gammons might be. You mean to tell me, credibly, that in all the locker rooms he’s been in for all these years he never saw anything, ever? He didn’t see enough to make him want to follow a reporter’s instinct that maybe, just maybe, there is a story to tell? And that’s not to single out Gammons at all. Paul Hoynes, Sheldon Ocker and Terry Pluto, to name just three locals, have been covering major league baseball literally for decades and have been in those same locker rooms. Where were they when it mattered most? And that’s not to single out Hoynes of Pluto either. Every town with a major league team has their own versions of Hoynes, Ocker and Pluto. They were silent as well.

In still another corner sits the club owners and executives, exemplified by the likes of Houston’s Drayton McLane who said on Friday that he still plans on letting Clemens fulfill his personal services contract with the club, barring “real evidence” linking Clemens to steroids. In just that one statement, McLane couldn’t have sent a more powerful message as to what he thinks about Mitchell’s report.

But for the conveniently forgetful McLane, he should check out pages 167-175 of the Mitchell report. Clemens is mentioned some 82 times. The accusations couldn’t be more specific: Clemens’ personal trainer, someone to whom he is still inextricably linked, says he personally injected Clemens with steroids on several different occasions. That’s real evidence, enough so that the burden does shift to Clemens to prove otherwise since this is not, after all, a criminal proceeding. But Clemens refused to cooperate. End of story. Selig thanks you very much, Mr. McLane. Your fruit basket should arrive on Monday.

The rest of the corners in this story, and there are plenty more, are equally sordid. The truth is that it’s far easier to attack the source than to confront the reality of what they have had to say. So in that sense, the reactions of those directly involved are understandable. But that doesn’t make them right. Jose Canseco may be a terrible human being for any reason you want to think. But to this point he’s still viewed as an outsider, a disgruntled ex-ball player even as virtually every one of his accusations bears fruit. He’s batting a thousand and he still hasn’t been sued.

But given the reaction to Canseco over these last several years, why then should we reasonably think that the reactions to the accusations made by Kirk Radomski or Brian McNamee would be any different? The default thinking, which makes so little sense it could have been written by Lewis Carroll, is that that they are making all this stuff up because they were facing more severe criminal penalties if they didn’t tell the truth. Huh? The last thing a guy facing hard time wants is to face even more hard time for not telling the truth. But why let a little logic get in the way?

A corollary to all of this is that Radomski and McNamee were just telling Mitchell and federal prosecutors what they wanted to hear. Left unexplained is why anyone would actually want to hear that the greatest players in the history of the sport were cheaters? What’s the incentive in that?

Whether the Mitchell report will ultimately have some long-term positive impact won’t be known for years, but don’t hold your breath in the interim. Too many people with a vested interest in this are so deep in denial that they can’t even see the blood on their own hands. But for all the denial they’ll continue to muster, there legacy will always be that they helped ruin the very game they professed to love. Starting over, from scratch, is the least they can do now.