With more and more stories coming out about baseball's dirty little steroid secrets coming out - the latest one being a
10 years ago - it's a wonder that this scandal is coming out now rather than earlier.
After all; it's not hard to see the symptoms: weight gain, acne, roid rage, muscle tears, etc. Even without this Special Agent, Jose Canseco, or Kimberley Bell, Major League Baseball knew about the problem. The owners knew. The managers knew (in fact, former Oakland A's manager Tony LaRussa admitted
he knew Canseco was on them at the time). The Players' Association knew. Yet because of the money their roided monsters were making for them, they decided to keep it on the hush.
Professional Wrestling went through the same phase (actually, it still is going through it), and public measures weren't addressed until Vince McMahon was charged by federal prosecutors with roid trafficking. He beat the rap (and he should have) but that should have been baseball's hint to do something about their problem before it escalated into what we see now. Too bad most people deride pro wrestling as a circus act, or baseball would realize that they were actually taking a look into their future.
Thus, Major League Baseball is wallowing in a problem that they've allowed to ferment for several years. It took the outing of the monsters, who have broken records while on the juice, to do it.
Thus, it doesn't matter whether Canseco (who
Nykol called a snitch. Ha.), Bell, or the FBI Agent is telling the truth, because baseball fans know there's fire where there's smoke. The sad thing is that for most of them we won't know for certain whether they were on it until their health deteriorates - and their addictions strengthens - much like
Ken Caminiti's did.
But every time we hear about a torn quad, or a baseball player that went apeshit in public, or a baseball player who's checking into rehab, someone should always remind MLB that they could have done something to prevent that from happening.
