MLB’s engagement in self-sabotage is nothing new

Beginning with the steroid era, MLB has become an expert at self-sabotage.

In watching ‘Long Gone Summer’, I was struck by the fact that PED’s barely played into the story of the 1998 home run race. In fact, we only got to hear about implications leveled against Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in the last 15 minutes of the 120-minute film.

Though for a long time I didn’t agree with BBWAA members who wouldn’t vote for the likes of McGwire and Sosa into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, I understood their rationale. In rewatching the documentary, however, I was struck by a couple of statements made by Sosa in particular:

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"“In that (New York Times) list was about 106 players,” Sosa said in reference to his name being leaked in association to the anonymous test conducted by MLB in 2003 to the NYT. Sosa continued, “there is about 4 or 5 (players in that list), maybe more than that, in the Hall of Fame.”"

And he’s right!

Earlier in the interview, Sosa revealed something we should all take note of… “Why would they worry about me (taking PEDs), when pretty much everybody in that era did it?”

So, for the rest of this piece, I’m going to make a case for players like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame. And it all has to do with baseball being complicit in the steroid era.

The fact of the matter is, MLB  knew about PED use and did NOTHING about it.

In 1990, Congress passed the Anabolic Steroids Control Act, effectively making anabolic steroids illegal. In response to this, one year later, then MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent issued a memo outlining the league’s drug policy, saying, “The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by MLB players and personnel is strictly prohibited.” The memo also said that any player or personnel “involved in the possession, sale or use of any illegal drug are subject to discipline… risk permanent expulsion from the game.”

One glaring thing the memo failed to outline, however, was HOW players and personnel could get caught. There were no tests being implemented, right?

It goes deeper than that, though. In the late 1980s, the FBI was tasked to investigate the sale and use of steroids in the US. Operation Equine, as it was later named, found a prominent steroid dealer in Curtis Wenzlaff who named two prominent players as devout customers: Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire (aka “The Bash Brothers”).

I spoke to the agent who headed the investigation, Greg Stejskal a little over a year ago about Operation Equine and confirmed that in 1994 he warned MLB about steroid abuse in the game… and they did nothing about it.

It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that baseball really started taking things seriously. Even then, however, it was all just eyewash.

2003 was then that baseball finally started testing players, but it was only “survey testing” and results were to be kept anonymous. The results of that “survey” test found that well over 5% of MLB players were using PED’s, triggering mandatory testing in 2004.

That unanimous “survey” test is the same one that eventually got out and implicated the likes of…

• Alex Rodriguez
• Sammy Sosa
• David Ortiz
• Manny Ramirez

…and more!

I won’t get into how absurd the original policy was. The point is, prior to 2003, NO player is above suspicion because NOBODY tested positive because MLB DIDN’T TEST ANYBODY!

What’s more, MLB may have been juicing baseballs to aide in the increased HR rate.

In the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches”, author Zack Hample reveals that balls may have been juiced during the heart of the steroid era. In fact, the book outlines how In 2001, Dennis Hilliard, the director of the crime lab at the University of Rhode Island got 5 different fans to donate foul balls they’d caught at MLB games between 1963 and 2000. His team then surgically cut the balls open and dropped the cores from a controlled height of 182 inches.

The 3 oldest cores (1963, 1970, and 1989) bounced an average of 62 inches. The two newer ones (1995 and 2000) bounced an average of 82 inches, a 32.3% increase.

Even players like Billy Koch of the Toronto Blue Jays took it upon himself in 2000 to deconstruct a baseball, only to reveal what he called a “super ball” at its core.

In knowing all of this, guess who eventually made his way into Cooperstown? The man overseeing the whole thing, Mr. Bud Selig.

So, how could you justify keeping players implicated in the scandal out of the Hall, while those who enabled the scandal, aided in it, get etched into baseball history? You can’t.