A-Rod's not the only villain in steroid scandal

I agree with this article from www.msnbc.com. Where are the 103 other names on this list? Don't just ruin A-Rod's life and career, ruin everybody else's too. At this point I could care less who did and did not do steroids. Obviously, everyone at one time or another has tried some sort of enhancer. It is just that some got caught and some did not. Look at Shauwn Merriman of the San Diego Chargers...... he got caught doing steroids, served his suspension and no one cares. If you are going to bring out a list of names, then you should have the balls to list everyone, not just the ones you can write a book about and make some money off of their humility!!!!!

A-Rod's not the only villain in steroid scandal

My first thought after Alex Rodriguez was outed for being among 104 major leaguers who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 is, “Who are the other 103?”
Come on, Bud Selig and Don Fehr. If we’re going to let one guy get crucified for the results of a test that was supposed to be anonymous, let’s crucify them all. Let’s line the streets with gibbets and hang the lot of them in public so the pious can pelt them with rotten vegetables and mock them for trying to meet our demands to be entertained.
I’ve never been much of an A-Rod fan, as my past columns about him amply demonstrate. But I’ve always been a fan of fairness, and what it happening to the man baseball fans most love to hate (Barry Bonds is out of work, so we’re not counting him.) is, simply put, not fair.
To A-Rod’s credit, his response to ESPN after being caught sounded pretty honest. He said he was young and naïve and he wanted to prove he was worth the biggest contract in baseball history. ‘Roids were part of the culture of the game then, so he took whatever the other guys were taking that helped them play better.
It might sound shallow, but the guy’s a jock. What do you expect?
I know Rodriguez lied a couple of years back when Katie Couric asked him if he had ever used the juice, but I’m not going to hold that against him. That was the same as asking him if he had ever cheated on his wife. Or asking elected officials if they’re atheists. People don’t answer those questions honestly unless they are under oath or confronted with the evidence against them. Even then, they try to wriggle out of it because if you admit it, you’re dead.
Anyway, none of this should surprise anyone. This is, after all, what you get when you let Major League Baseball and its players association try to do anything that might have the kind of consequences A-Rod is suffering now.
The testing that Sports Illustrated says caught A-Rod was supposed to be an anonymous process that would set a baseline for real testing, which would begin in 2004, with penalties. The obvious question is why names were recorded if the tests were to be anonymous. Baseball and the players' union argue that the samples were identified only by number, and the list of names was kept in a separate location so the two would never meet.
But it was the players' association that demanded that the names of the malefactors be preserved, and on Donald Fehr’s head can be heaped the largest pile of abuse. Fehr’s thinking was that he wanted a record to protect against false positive tests, but if the tests weren’t going to be used to discipline anyone, why bother.
How dumb could he be? Doesn’t anyone read the papers or follow the media? If it is possible to connect names and numbers, they will be connected. You could have one list on Mars and the other list on the third moon of Saturn, and somebody will still find them and put them together, especially if it might provide a chance to humiliate someone rich and famous.
In this case, the connection apparently was made by federal prosecutors who subpoenaed the test results as part of the investigations into steroids and baseball. And once the lists were joined, it was only a matter of time before some nitwit who loves bringing down the mighty leaked the big name to reporters, because, you know, it’s A-Rod, and he deserves it.
The trouble is A-Rod doesn’t deserve it. Nobody does.
But baseball and its union have mishandled the steroids issue at every turn. Both started by ignoring that there might even be a problem. The players’ association fought testing or penalties at every turn. Bud Selig was delighted at all the fans and money that came into the game because players were hitting heroic numbers of home runs. And the media, with rare exceptions, raised few questions until the truth came out. And then the reaction was shock and outrage.