Opening Day arrives under cloud of steroids
ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Major League Baseball season starts tonight and the Red Sox season starts tomorrow afternoon here in a ballpark built with some help from George W. Bush, and we are talking about steroids. Now and again. Forever, it seems.
Want some theme music for the first month of the 2006 baseball season? How about Neil Young's ''The Needle and the Damage Done"? Commissioner Bud Selig should be able to hum a few bars.
We'll never be able to truly quantify the damage done during the Steroid Era. Records have been smashed by cheaters, bodies have been grotesquely inflated, and the integrity of the game has been irreparably harmed -- more so than at any time since the Black Sox scandal, which almost killed big league baseball and gave birth to the office of the commissioner.
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis thumbed his nose at a corrupt Chicago trial verdict and banished eight players for life after the White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. And the office created for him was endowed with power to do just about anything to preserve the best interests of baseball. Restoring trust in baseball is what Uncle Bud was trying to do in New York Thursday when he appointed former Senator George Mitchell to lead an investigation into the Steroid Era.
Sad. March 30, 2006, goes down as the day Selig hoped would never come. He wanted the whole thing to go away. He wanted to wash his hands of steroids, point to the tough new policy, and move forward. He wanted to never look back at the wicked weirdness of the Steroid Era. He hoped the Congressional hearing of 2005 -- with Mark McGwire reduced to a pathetic figure, Sammy Sosa hiding behind his lawyer, and Rafael Palmeiro lying in front of the Western world -- would be the last word on the tawdry time. But a damning book by a couple of intrepid reporters and the looming presence of Mr. Barry Bonds would not let the Steroid Era vanish in the rearview mirror.
And so begins the impossible task of trying to figure out who was doing what and who knew about it back in the day. Mitchell has been told he can go back to the years before September 2002 when MLB and the Players Association (the silent and too-often-overlooked coconspirator in this cesspool explosion) agreed to outlaw performance-enhancing drugs. He can go back to Lenny Dykstra if he wants.
It is an impossible undertaking, virtually guaranteed to produce an unhappy ending. Mitchell has no subpoena power and is not going to get cooperation from lawyered-up ballplayers who no doubt will fall back on the advice of the intransigent and suspicious Players Association. Police have a hard time going to court and proving drunk drivers were truly intoxicated when they failed field sobriety tests and Breathalyzers. And now George Mitchell is magically going to be able to verify that Ballplayer X took steroids two, five, or 10 years ago?
And should anything be verified, what exactly will be the consequences? Can Selig change the record books? Can he declare cheaters ineligible for the Hall of Fame? Can he sanction people who are still playing? It's a little late to go after admitted cheater Ken Caminiti, the former MVP. He's already dead. But what about the scores of big leaguers who failed tests when they were in the minors? And what about the BALCO Guys -- Messrs. Bonds, Sheffield, and Giambi? They are the first targets of this broad-based investigation. And they are still playing. What happens to them?
Bonds is the poster child for all of this. He is the focus of ''Game of Shadows," which embarrassed Selig into starting this investigation. Bonds is on the threshold of breaking some of baseball's most fabled records. He's only six homers shy of Babe Ruth and he can catch Hank Aaron if he has a good year. MLB mega-sponsor
No one will be spared. Managers, trainers, media members, Players Association directors, and owners -- that means you, too, Bud -- are all going to be viewed as accomplices. Selig will have this thrown in his face every step of the way. How much did Bud know? Why did he allow us to embrace what we now know to be the artificial home run chase (Popeye McGwire vs. Bluto Sosa) in 1998? Bud can deflect some of this in the direction of Mr. Donald Fehr, but it goes down in history that the Steroid Era played out under his watch.
The timing is terrible. It is the eve of what should be a great major league season, and we are talking about the needle and the damage done. The investigation looks like a public relations ploy. Fans are dubious and players are agitated.
And what are we to make of the selection of Mitchell? (Ken Starr must have been unavailable.) Mitchell is without doubt a great American, but he is a politician and carries more conflicts of interests than those who cover the Red Sox for the Globe (owned by the
But at the end of the day, every day, I just want to know what Willie Mays is thinking. Willie hit 660 home runs. He did it without cheating. And now his godson has moved ahead of him on the home run chart.
Willie knows. We all know. Bonds is in the on-deck circle, ready to overtake Ruth. He did it with his own talent, plus some illegal help from his friends. And now there is a book and an investigation and we'll all hold our nose as Barry pollutes the 2006 baseball season with his fraudulent and joyless pursuit of baseball's most cherished records.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com. 
