The beginning of the steroids Gestapo?

I said a few days ago that I was disappointed at the way the Roger Clemens saga that arose due to the naming of names in the Mitchell report had deflected attention away from the other findings and recommendations of the Mitchell report. It's been one of the prominent stories in sports for the last several weeks, and likely won't be going away time soon, as Clemens and company will be in front of Congress on February 13th. And, it will likely continue to be the dominant baseball story, despite the fact that today we had the most truly significant development in baseball since the Mitchell report dropped. The commissioner's office announced a number of the recommendations of the report that will be implemented.

The most significant implementation will be the creation of a department of investigations within the commissioner's office to probe drug use. As I said, this was a recommendation of the Mitchell report that has just been sitting out in the open for almost a month now, but due to all the commotion around Clemens and the other names, it's gone completely unnoticed by the mainstream sports media, along with virtually every other recommendation contained in the report.

I'm a huge proponent of cleaning up the game as much as is reasonably possible, but at first glance, this department scares the crap out of me. I'm of the opinion that the only way to truly and effectively clean up the game is by fostering an attitude of cooperation between the union and the league on the issue, and this really sounds like MLB is about ready to go all Gestapo on their players. That is quite possibly the worst thing that MLB could do, aside from going back to looking the other way. I'm going to concede that I've only just seen this article within the last couple hours, so I'm going to reserve some judgment on this implementation for a while, and keep an eye out as more information comes out, but I'm not optimistic given how the Mitchell report was handled in the first place.

There's a simple fact of life at work here - the cheaters are always going to stay ahead of those chasing them, the only question is how far ahead they stay. There's always going to be a window between when a new drug comes out and when there's a test for it. MLB can really only get very aggressive about policing what actually goes on within their walls. Going crazy with investigations is simply going to completely chase steroid use out of MLB buildings, and not out of the game. From the perspective of addressing the issue going forward, the fact that steroid use had been relatively open in the past would actually be a good thing, if MLB were to handle the situation properly. If MLB goes big brother on the players to the extent that I suspect will happen, what it will primarily serve to do is break down what has overall become a rather good working relationship between ownership and the union. I can see a major war at the next CBA negotiation if this department is what I think it's going to be.

Let me be clear, I want to see more done to clean up the game. I'm in favor of independent drug testing. I would like to see the players consent to blood testing, and to allowing test samples to be saved so that they can re-tested as tests for new drugs are developed. I'm for fostering an environment where players feel comfortable working together with ownership on cleaning up the game. Turning clubhouses into police states where players have to be constantly looking over their shoulder is totally counterproductive to cleaning up the game, in my opinion. I wonder if ownership isn't being overly sensitive to the criticism that all this went on under their noses for so long. I don't necessarily believe this department would clean up the game, but it would certainly clean up the clubhouses.

My primary concern in all of this is that fact that it seems quite likely to me that this announcement will go largely unnoticed, as the original recommendation in the Mitchell report did, by the media and the public. If that happens, the media will have failed the public once again. This is the kind of story that the sports media should be pulling out into the light and subjecting to all kinds of scrutiny, but I just don't see that happening until it's too late. The "who juiced" stories are all much more interesting, despite being largely irrelevant to addressing the future of baseball.

Of course, the sad reality may be that the public wouldn't see any problem with this sort of setup anyhow. I'd like to hope that's not the case, however. We'll see.