Just about all the big names have dropped now in Major League Baseball’s ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal. Few of the sport’s stars have avoided an association with steroids — the latest a New York Times report that Boston Red Sox sluggers David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez both tested positive during MLB’s anonymous drug-testing survey in spring training of 2003.
Ramirez? No surprise. He already tested positive earlier this season and served a 50-game suspension. Ortiz is a different story because as recently as this spring he steadfastly denied using drugs.
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In the end, are there any “tainted” titles if almost every team had a player — or players — involved with performance enhancers? An Orioles fan who spent the better part of seven years rooting for Rafael Palmeiro can’t take much joy in revelations about Ortiz or Yankees star Alex Rodriguez.
One sure fallout from the Ortiz news is that getting players to cooperate in such matters could be impossible. The list the Times cited, after all, was never supposed to be made public. The multiple lawyers, among others that the reporters used as sources, broke a federal judge’s court order by providing the information.
Union chief Donald Fehr, who recently announced he is retiring by next March, has long been portrayed as a villain standing in the way of baseball’s attempts to stop rampant steroid use. But the slow, anonymous leak of names validates Fehr’s worst fears and hurts the sport — drip by drip. Just when it appears the worst has come, more news breaks. And while it may be fun to watch players squirm under the spotlight as names of alleged users pop off the 2003 list, solving the problem doesn’t get any easier when they are exposed this way. There were 104 who tested positive over six years ago out of 1,198 total. Maybe the time has come to release the list and give amnesty to all — because there are still scores of names to go through before Major League Baseball’s past is truly behind it.
