The Steroid All-Stars finally are taking shape. And this time, people are not simply speculating while staring at grotesquely large biceps, thighs and foreheads. This time, there are names. Big names.
Bring 'em on.
One by one.
And keep them coming.
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| Yanks slugger Gary Sheffield reportedly is one of six players who received steroids.(AP) |
Fortunately, we haven't reached that point. Yet.
Instead, we've got the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), drug-sniffing dogs and a small but growing barking chorus of players -- woof, woof, John Smoltz, Turk Wendell, Denny Neagle and Todd Zeile among them. If the baseball gods are managing this properly, it all might add up to the most positive development in baseball this spring.
And by positive, I mean let's-end-steroids-in-baseball-for-good positive as well as pee-in-the-cup positive.
Let's make this clear first: There is no proof that Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Benito Santiago, Marvin Benard and Randy Velarde have ingested steroids. (Hey, stop your laughing. I'm serious here. Hey! Quit that!)
What's out there right now is a very strong newspaper report, from the San Francisco Chronicle, that federal investigators were told that these players received steroids from BALCO.
There was no clear statement of exactly what Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield and Co. actually did with the designer steroids they allegedly obtained.
Maybe they injected themselves.
Maybe they used the stuff for salad dressing.
Perhaps they simply needed, um ... uh ... a paperweight. Yeah, that's it. A paperweight.
Everyone knows that steroids, for once and for all, need to go the way of the Dead Ball Era, the San Francisco crab mascot and the Pittsburgh drug scandal of the 1970s. The dilemma is, how do we get there? If it takes the Feds rather than Commissioner Bud Selig and players' union boss Don Fehr to spray the Raid, then bring on Attorney General John Ashcroft and Co.
In Arizona, Bonds has steadfastly denied everything this spring.
In Tampa, Fla., Giambi issued his flat denial last week. When I asked him about Vitamin S on Saturday, he responded with a quick, "I addressed it. I've got nothing more to say."
Sheffield, also in Yankees camp, denies juicing up.
What there is no getting around is the fact that this latest story out of San Francisco is extremely damaging to this muscular sextet. Guilty, innocent or somewhere in-between, right now, they're tainted. Sooner or later, immunity or no immunity, they're going to have some 'splainin' to do.
Early Las Vegas favorite: They'll take a page from Bill Clinton's "I didn't inhale" defense.
The Feds are circling like wolves. They're not targeting athletes in this BALCO investigation, but that really doesn't matter. This thing keeps going as it is, athletes will be tossed into the street like so many fast-food wrappers along the freeway. Names were going to be exposed. They always were going to be exposed -- even if Bonds, Giambi and others were given immunity to testify.
That's the way it is with investigations. They leak more than an old paper cup.
And baseball, unable to significantly budge the players' union on the drug-testing issue for years, appears more than happy to ride the tidal wave of steroids momentum started by the Feds.
Though baseball officials have placed a gag order on individual club management -- Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, the Montreal manager, and Detroit skipper Alan Trammell each said they got the memo within the past few days -- what a coincidence it was that Selig issued a statement late Tuesday, the same day the Chronicle hit the streets, that again suggested that, golly gee, baseball would have been testing for steroids decades ago if not for the players.
He praised the five Congressmen responsible for co-sponsoring the "Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004," and also noted that baseball is free to test minor leaguers for drugs but said that, at the major-league level, "... We are required to conform to the parameters set by our collective bargaining relationship with the Major League Baseball Players Association and with federal law."
He did say that management and the union successfully negotiated the game's first-ever drug-testing program in 2002 and will begin unannounced testing of all major league players this season.
He did not say that this year's testing program has all of the teeth of a putty knife.
Nevertheless, by the time people are finished learning what BALCO stands for, that could change.
Because the union is going to have to significantly soften on this issue, for the good of its members, if nothing else. A thorough drug-testing program with consequences, long-term, can only be beneficial to players. To all who would be alarmed if they started growing a third arm, at least.
One thing worth watching closely is that, like nothing else before it, this issue has the potential to severely crack the union. If you're clean -- and despite the cloud cast by the guilty, a lot of these guys are -- why would you quietly sit back and allow yourself to be pushed out of the game by some juiced-up competitor who comes into spring camp and steals your job?
Or, if you're a pitcher, why would you allow yourself to be bludgeoned by the Charles Atlases in the other dugout?
Smoltz, Wendell and Neagle have taken a stand. The more players who follow, the better off they -- and the game -- are.
It's one thing to band together to fight management over a new bargaining agreement.
It's quite another when you're the guy getting screwed by some of your 'roid-ragin' union brothers.
There are at least two levels of steroid-takers. There are the elite players who do it to make sure they stay in that category. And there are the fringe players who wind up doing it out of pressure, thinking that if they don't, other players are going to pass them by.
If there are zero levels after this investigation takes its place in baseball's history books -- alongside the 1919 Black Sox scandal and the 1970s Pittsburgh drug scandals -- then BALCO, in the end, in a twisted way, actually will have contributed to the game.
