The New York Times Opinion
Op-Ed Contributor

An Outside-the-Park Investigation
By BUSTER OLNEY
Published: April 1, 2006

IN 1996, when I was covering baseball for The Baltimore Sun, I approached a prominent player and asked him about the assumption that many scouts had been making about him: he was taking steroids.

The slugger angrily denied the suggestion, and with no evidence linking him to steroid use, I didn't print a word about the exchange. I had no proof.

For years — beginning in 1989, in fact — I had heard executives, scouts and players speculate about steroid use. In the same way we chatted about a pitcher's control or a fielder's range, we talked about which players might be using steroids. I talked with colleagues about ways of reporting the story, but always it came back to this: No smoking gun. No specific link. No story.

In the spring of 2002, I wrote an article for The Times quoting general managers on the record about what effect, if any, possible steroid use had on contract offers. I felt good about the article, until this thought hit me: I could've written the same piece six years earlier. Even if I hadn't been able to get the specifics, I could have done a better job of reporting how people in baseball thought the game was being changed by performance-enhancing drugs.

I had a role in baseball's institutional failure during what will be forever known as the Steroid Era. But I was only part of the problem, because just about everyone in baseball is to blame: the big league and minor league steroid users; the clean players who said nothing for too long; the players association leaders, Don Fehr and Gene Orza; and, of course, the baseball owners and Commissioner Bud Selig.

That's why it seems farcical that Selig is only now opening an investigation into steroid use — an investigation prompted by a book, "Game of Shadows," that accuses Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants of using steroids.

And that's why it will be doubly farcical if the inquiry, led by George Mitchell, in the end focuses only on Bonds and a handful of other players. It would be like laying all the blame for Iran-contra on Oliver North.

For a steroid investigation to be credible, it would have to look at all of baseball: not just the players, but the league and the union as well. The inquiry would have to determine what Major League Baseball and union officials knew, and when they knew it.

After all, the evidence was there. In 1988 — the same year that the Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of a gold medal for steroid use — The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell reported that his sources told him Jose Canseco used steroids. In 1995, The Los Angeles Times quoted Frank Thomas and Tony Gwynn, star players at the time, and two general managers about the growing steroid problem. Selig himself was quoted in the same article, saying, "If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we are not aware of it."

In 1998, Mark McGwire acknowledged his use of androstenedione, a steroid precursor. By 2002, there were admissions of steroid use from players, beginning with Ken Caminiti, who later died at age 41 after years of drug and alcohol abuse. The anecdotal evidence of the prevalence of steroids — the suddenly cartoonish jawlines and foreheads — was overwhelming, and yet the commissioner never started an investigation.

Selig wasn't alone in his willingness to turn a blind eye. The players association, the most powerful and influential entity within the sport during the Steroid Era, was extraordinarily lax in protecting the practical interests of the clean players, many of whom felt competitive pressure to use the drugs.

Wally Joyner, who broke in at about the same time as McGwire, Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro and others, revealed last fall that in the spring of 1998, he came face to face with a choice: Use steroids, or fall behind and perhaps out of the game. Joyner's offensive numbers were falling while those of his peers were exploding, even as they entered their 30's. So Joyner tried steroids, taking them twice before flushing the rest of the pills down a toilet.

Joyner was not an exception. In 2002, USA Today polled more than 500 players anonymously and 79 percent indicated they favored steroid testing — with 44 percent saying they felt pressure to take steroids. Yet the union did little if anything to support these athletes, to explore how the cheaters were affecting the choices of players who wanted to stay clean.

To investigate Bonds, or just a handful of superstars, would be a mistake. If there is going to be an independent steroid investigation, if baseball truly wants answers, the actions of everyone from Bonds to Selig to Fehr must be subject to scrutiny. And if that's not going to happen, there's no point in investigating anything at all.

Buster Olney, who covered the Yankees for The Times, writes for ESPN the Magazine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/opinion/01olney.html?_r=1&oref=slogin