Everybody knows that Major League Baseball has a large and looming steroid problem, which goes by the name of Barry Bonds. The Giants slugger, who has been implicated in using performance-enhancing drugs in a federal investigation of a California drug lab, is just 13 home runs away from tying Hank Aaron’s career record, an event that promises to highlight a huge embarrassment.
But the hulking Bonds may not look so big once another investigation is done. Last week, Kirk Radomski pleaded guilty to selling steroids, human growth hormone and amphetamines to, in his words, “dozens of current and former Major League Baseball players (on teams spread throughout Major League Baseball) and associates.”
The former New York Mets clubhouse assistant said he was still supplying in December 2005, when federal agents raided his home. That was a few weeks after Commissioner Bud Selig and players union executive director Donald Fehr agreed on a tougher drug policy that strengthened penalties and greatly expanded testing of players. What’s more, Radomski said his clients often paid by personal check, leaving documentation that could buttress his claims.
Apparently even the advent of a new drug policy didn’t dry up his business. But the worse news is that Radomski’s admission implies that there may be a lot of guilty players — 25? 50? 100? — who are likely, sooner or later, to be exposed. That development would magnify a problem that baseball spent a long time ignoring, to the detriment of public confidence in the game.
Radomski’s admission confirms that steroids didn’t suddenly fade away after Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro retired. It adds to the fallout from the grand jury probe of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which allegedly has implicated such current stars as Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield. And it raises the question of whether, before testing began, steroid use was more the norm than the exception.
For Selig, the question is what to do about players who have not tested positive but who have been convincingly implicated of using illegal drugs to gain an advantage. So far, the most discussed question is whether the commissioner will see fit to be present if and when Aaron’s record is broken.
What he ought to be focusing on instead is how to deal with players who have not failed a drug test but who are convincingly implicated in steroid use.
He can’t afford to make excuses for inaction. When he finds strong evidence of cheating, he should be prepared to impose stiff punishment on the guilty.
The tougher drug policy raises the hope that baseball has finally turned the corner on that problem. Fehr recently told a group of sports editors, “Five to 10 years down the road, we probably won’t be having much of this discussion.” Maybe he’s right. But baseball can’t afford to wait five or 10 years to act. It has a lot of cleaning up to do right now.
