In the wake of Mark McGwire's admission that he used steroids and his blubbering, Costas-ized public apology, there's been a good deal of faux outrage, petty character assassination, bad spelling, and even worse logic as the spineless hacks at the BBWAA and their willing sheep in the blogosphere rushed to pronounce judgement on Big Mac.  There were the usual hyperbolic calls for records to be expunged, for purity to be restored to the game, and that sort of sanctimonious nonsense.  There were those who nobly pretended to be shocked by McGwire's admission. And then, there were those who laughed.

All the way to the bank.

I am speaking, of course, of the MLB owners cabal, and, in particular, of the leader, the man with the penchant for the short-sleeve dress shirt, one Bud Selig. You see, Bud and his cronies don't want you looking deeper than the players in this steroid mess. All your anger and indignation needs to be focused on the players. That's what they want. What they don't want is for a different story to be told, a story about the people who profited most from the steroid scandal--because the MLB owners cabal are those people.  Does that absolve the players of their role? Not at all. Even if there was a lot of gray area in the MLB rules regarding steroids, the players were violating state and/or federal drug laws, in some cases even committing wire fraud,  by ingesting, and transporting across state lines, controlled substances for which they did not have a prescription.  In the case that they enlisted the help of a physician to obtain such a prescription, they also committed insurance fraud. So the players are by no means exculpated by what I'm going to say here. In fact, I think there are three, equally culpable parties in the steroid mess: the players, the writers, and the owners.  For some reason, only the players bear the ire of the fans. They are the face of the problem. But what about the writers, these self-appointed guardians of the game?  To a man, they decry steroids now, but where were they on 1988? For that matter, where were they in 1998? Now these mute watchmen rise in all their fury to point the finger of blame anywhere but themselves, and, as usual, miss the real target: the owners.  That's the story that needs to be told, and that's the story that ACB is going to tell.

From the Mitchell Report, we know that a "serious" steroid problem existed in baseball as early as 1988.  We also now know that's about the time McGwire began his steroid use. It took three years before MLB got around to acting on what they knew to be a problem, the now-infamous memo from Fay Vincent, a memo that did, well, nothing, and was largely ignored. It kowtowed to union pressure in not allowing for random testing, and it gave the owners a handy out by being worded such that trainers and players would bear the brunt of any drug use that would be discovered.

In 1993, in the course of another investigation, federal authorities uncovered evidence that several MLB players, among them Mark McGwire, were using steroids, and in 1994, they informed MLB of this fact:

[Now-retired FBI agent] Stejskal said federal authorities, through their undercover operation, learned of McGwire’s steroid usage by 1993. A year later, Stejskal recalled that he shared information from the investigation related to baseball players with Major League Baseball’s then security boss, Kevin Hallinan, though the sport had no drug testing program at the time.

In 1995, with a strike, largely of his own making, looming on the horizon, Bud Selig flatly denied that a steroid problem existed in baseball, despite having been informed a year earlier that such a problem did, indeed, exist:

“If baseball has a problem,” Selig says, “I must say candidly that we were not aware of it. It certainly hasn’t been talked about much. But should we concern ourselves as an industry?”

Shockingly,  Selig would acknowledge that there was a steroid problem just two years later. In a 1997 memo, the Commissioner's Office once again announced a prohibition on steroids, one that now contained a testing arm. The only problem? Here's what they were testing for:

Samples will be tested for the following controlled substances: cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines, opiates, and phencyclidine.

Right. So, two years after a strike almost destroyed baseball, a strike engineered in large part by Bud Selig, we have yet another drug policy carefully crafted to have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the rampant use of steroids in MLB.  By 1998, however, even some players had gotten fed up, one of them, Rick Helling had the testicular fortitude to say something at the Winter meetings:

"There is this problem with steroids," Helling told them. "It's happening. It's real. And it's so prevalent that guys who aren't doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they're falling behind. It's not a level playing field. We've got to figure out a way to address it.

 

"It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that's what's happening. And I don't feel like this is the right way to go."

In the face of such a bold accusation, MLB decided that doing nothing wasn't enough. Extra steps had to be taken. In a matter of hours, the use of steroids would be officially condoned:

At those same 1998 winter baseball meetings in Nashville, baseball’s two medical directors, Dr. Robert Millman, who was appointed by the owners, and Dr. Joel Solomon, the designee of the players, delivered a presentation to baseball executives and physicians about the benefits of using testosterone. Angels general manager Bill Stoneman was so surprised at the tone of the presentation” basically, the message he heard was that no evidence exists that steroids were harmful” that he wondered why Major League Baseball even had allowed it.

 

Also in attendance was Dr. William Wilder, the physician for the Cleveland Indians. Wilder was so disturbed by the presentation that he wrote a memorandum to Indians general manager John Hart that whether testosterone increased muscle strength and endurance “begs the question of whether it should be used in athletics.” Wilder also endorsed sending information to players about the “known and unknown data about performance-enhancing substances.”

And we all know what happened in the summer of 1998.  Baseball was saved by McGwire and Sosa's chase of Maris' single-season HR mark. And while they were feted then, both are vilified now.  But little is said of the men who crafted the policies that players like McGwire and Sosa doubtlessly saw as a green light to ingest as many PEDs as they wished. In 2001, the single-season record once again threatened, Selig began crowing about steroids and the integrity of the game, even as a different message was making it's way into the clubhouses:

"I'm in spring training, and I got an 8:30-9:00 meeting in the morning. I walk into that office, and this happened while I was with the Boston Red Sox before this last regime, I'm sitting in the meeting. There's a doctor up there and he's talking about steroids, and everyone was like 'here we go, we're gonna sit here and get the whole thing -- they're bad for you.' No. He spins it and says 'you know what, if you take steroids and sit on the couch all winter long, you can actually get stronger than someone who works out clean, if you're going to take steroids, one cycle won't hurt you, abusing steroids it will.' He sat there for one hour and told us how to properly use steroids while I'm with the Boston Red Sox, sitting there with the rest of the organization, and after this I said 'what the heck was that?' And everybody on the team was like 'what was that?' And the response we got was 'well, we know guys are taking it, so we want to make sure they're taking it the right way'... Where did that come from? That didn't come from the Players Association."

Now, there have been denials of Merloni's statements, but nothing beyond gainsaying.  And when taken in concert with Helling's account, one that has never been refuted, and is in fact bolstered by the statements of the Cleveland team doctor, a pretty clear picture of the almost entirely permissive attitude towards steroids begins to appear, an attitude that was not only cultivated by, but actively encouraged by, officials at the highest eschelons of MLB.

Ultimately, this comes down to just one thing: Money.

As to players, as Bill James so succintly puts it, they simply did what the system rewarded them for doing.

As to the owners, they saw comprehensive drug testing as little more than killing the golden goose. After all, from 1992-2008, MLB's profits increased 279%.  As the shirtsleeves and hatbands expanded, the MLB coffers swelled at an exponential rate of growth.  From the dearly departed 1060W,

Why was MLB not willing to take a look at the steroid problem? The answer is as basic as they come -- dollar signs. According to Team Marketing Report(TMR) MLB prices have risen 45% since 1998 and 86% since 1994. Here's how the owners have taken our cash since '94.

 

Year

Avg Tkt

% change

FCI

2004

$19.82

3.90%

$155.52

2003

$19.01

3.42%

$151.19

2002

$18.30

3.80%

$145.21

2001

$17.64

4.91%

$140.63

2000

$16.81

12.10%

$132.44

1999

$15.00

9.90%

$121.76

1998

$13.66

10.20%

$115.06

1997

$12.39

9.40%

$107.26

1996

$11.32

5.50%

$103.07

1995

$10.73

1.20%

$ 97.55

1994

$10.60

8.90%

$ 96.41

And their profits continue to grow, only now it's not from the duplicitous proponing of steroid use, but from the phony tough guy "cleaning up the game" campaign, a campaign orchestrated and run by the very people who first sullied the game. There's been one voice in this whole mess that has been right all along: Jose Canseco. And that really tells the story of this mess, because Jose Canseco is a first-class piece of shit. But on this one particular issue, and issue he knows more intimately than perhaps any other MLB figure, he's been right a lot more than he's been wrong. Here's what Jose had to say:

"This is a 25-year cover-up," Canseco wrote in a text message on the same day Alex Rodriguez admitted to using performance enhancers with the Rangers. "The true criminals are Gene Orza, Donald Fehr and Bud. Investigate them, and you will have all the answers."

And that's the story we're going to tell here in the months going forward.  The player's role in this mess has been all too well documented, but little has been written of the role MLb and the owners played, and nothing has been written of the role the writers played.

It's time for us to begin to get the full picture of the steroid era.