No flex in union muscle

It's difficult to sit here in the heart of Red Sox Nation -- where people are buying every form of BoSox garb and memorabilia (Red Sox dog bones?) to put under the tree -- and feel the rain of the game's steroid scandal soaking your head and shoulders.

We are conflicted. Sox fans want to enjoy the moment and savor the championship season forever. And yet the sad and scary stories keep pouring down on our heads.

Maybe the scandal never will directly touch the World Series winners. Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi never played for the Red Sox. Gary Sheffield is a Yankee. Certainly no Sox fan is going to return any season tickets because he or she is bothered by the dark cloud of steroids.

But the sport and so many of its monumental records are forever stained, and it's going to be impossible to operate in a "roid-free zone" while you continue to bask in the euphoria of a championship won after 86 long, hard years.

Because of the joke that serves as baseball's drug-testing policy, every major leaguer is suspect. And that is what is being addressed this week in Phoenix at the major league meetings. The Players Association yesterday gave its leaders the OK to negotiate a tougher drug-testing program with Major League Baseball to help clean up the sport.

I wish I could believe it, but I don't. The Players Association through the years has given no indication that it cares about the game or the fans. The association, the most successful of its kind in the history of the world, exists to make players rich and secure. It is run by men with a maniacal distrust of management.

Addressing the drug-testing issue at this time requires opening up a collective bargaining agreement that does not expire until 2006. Union leaders Donald Fehr and Gene Orza are not about to give back things they bargained for in 2002. And if they entertain the idea, they'll want something else in return. They consider such "givebacks" a form of labor-relations amputation.

The baseball Players Association is not a "union" in any true sense of the word. The members have individual contracts. The members do not honor picket lines of other unions. In the spring of 1995, they actually considered hiring outsiders to carry signs for them in picket lines. They are a union when it's convenient, but never when it's difficult. What they are, really, is a tight and extremely well-run club of millionaires.

The Players Association may, in fact, reopen the agreement, but do not expect any form of drug-testing that will rid the game of steroids. Fehr and Orza will take the ACLU route and convince the players that owners will abuse drug testing and use it as a means to get out from under weighty contracts. The leaders of the Players Association will tell membership that thorough drug testing will put their careers at risk. They'll inject fear that a player could have his contract voided because he took Tylenol PM, or had two glasses of wine after dinner. Players will be warned about Big Brother and The Man.

And as always, the players will do what Fehr and Orza command. The vote will be the usual 620-0. There is no room for private ballots or dissension in the Major League Baseball Players Association. Independent thinkers are not allowed.

I hope I am wrong.

Do fans care? Hard to tell. Baseball had record attendance in 2004 and the Red Sox story was a feel-good movie for the entire country.

But this issue is important because Bonds is going to chase Hank Aaron and it's going to be a joke. Some fans will say they don't care, while others rightfully will taunt him as a cheater. Either way, it's going to make a mockery of what should be a magical quest. By the same token, the wonderful home run contest between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa is forever tainted. All of it. We just don't know.

More important is the message this sends to thousands of high school and college ballplayers: You can get ahead by cheating. If you don't do it, the guy in the next locker might do it and he might be the one who gets drafted by a major league team. Instead of you.

This is why I hope some major league ballplayers step forward and say, "I am clean. I have nothing to hide. I don't like being suspected of using steroids just because I am a member of an association that resists serious drug testing. Bring it on."

We don't need to hear any more from Sen. McCain, Sen. Biden, Commissioner Selig, Fehr, or Orza. We need to hear from Tim Wakefield, Kevin Millar, Ellis Burks, and David Ortiz. We need to hear from one or two players brave enough to defy the powerful leadership of the Players Association.

Bet we don't.

Forget about the Yankees, people. If you love baseball, the true Evil Empire is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Never a union. Forever an Empire.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.