Ozzie Guillen and Lou Piniella, Chicago managers, want the names of all 104 players who tested positive in 2003, the first year of drug testing in MLB, be released. The said managers are not alone in this clamor as some players and media members also called on baseball to show the full list instead of leaking it slowly and painfully through the media. In a column at cbssports.com written by Gwen Knapp, it said that “it’s understandable that people would want the whole truth and consider it unfair for Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez to have been cited while 102 players have retained the confidentiality they were promised when they urinated into a specimen cup six years ago. But most of the people who support releasing the names simply want to be done with the scandal, and they’re willing to take a shortcut to the finish line.”

MLB has agreed to keep the said list as a secret and no matter how many names have leaked, the commissioner’s office still has to honor the deal. And if MLB could void a contractual promise of that magnitude simply on the theory that it would serve to be of the game’s best interest, then all contracts should also be voidable. It is definitely bad for the game to have teams stuck with injured or underperforming players. What the league really needs, according to the article, is to understand that the doping issue, once it burrows under the sport’s skin, defies closure.

The International Olympic Committee thought it would end all doping and steroid issues when Ben Johnson tested positive in Seoul. Johnson is a champion in the 100-meter dash during the 1998 Summer Games. And almost two decades after, the IOC was revoking the medals of Marion Jones and admits that it did not know how to re-assign some of the medals because many of her competitors were also tainted with doping.

And in 1998, French police searched the hotels of the cyclists en route of the Tour de France, following up on a border drug bust of a Belgian aide to one of the teams, whose car has performance-enhancing substances. The raid is considered by many Tour fans as prevention in further steroid-related cases as it would scare potential cheaters in the future. And after nine years, organizers of the said race would be booting the pre-race favorite because of some doping connections. Tyler Hamilton, another gold-medal-winning cyclist was handed down with 8 year suspension for doping. Also, Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour de France champion, would lose his title when he tested positive for artificial testosterone. And lastly, 1996 Tour champ Bjarne Riis confessed to using an endurance drug.

Many athletes are tempted of using chemical enhancements because of their lavish reward. But rather than extolling a testing program that still has serious limitations, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, said Knapp, wants to embrace humility. “Instead of declaring victories, he can promise vigilance. Players will take the threat of detection a lot more seriously if the game’s leaders stop trying to tie doping up into a package, into a single era that can be dumped like toxic waste at a landfill.”

Trackback URI | Comments RSS