Major League Baseball simply
cannot rewrite its ugly history with performance-enhancing drugs, no matter how
much Bud Selig & Co would like to.
But MLB took another step in
the right direction with additional improvements to its drug testing program
that will now include in-season blood testing for human growth hormone and for
synthetic testosterone in an attempt to catch those bold (or stupid) enough to
try to cheat the system. Baseball officials will proudly declare their program
to be the toughest of any of the major US sports. But they won’t talk about how
long it took to get there.
Selig denied any embarrassment
by the shutout thrown by the baseball writers in their 2013 Hall of Fame
balloting. But the message was sent, not only to the players who cheated, but
to everyone else who didn’t do enough to stop PED use, including Selig. Yes,
the players union thwarted him at every turn during the negotiations, but Selig
didn’t use the loud megaphone he has at his disposal to pressure the union to
embrace testing. If the commissioner had come out and said he suspected PED use
was rampant, that might have spurred the public outrage a lot sooner than Jose
Canseco and the fine reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle did.
I do give MLB credit for
making this such a core issue that improvements to the system no longer wait
for the next round of union negotiations. Better late than never, I suppose.
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