-Hank Aaron has requested that government release the 2003 steroid list.

-Ozzie Guillen has asked for it to be released so we can move on.

-Jose Canseco says the list needs to be released…he claims there is at least one Hall of Famer that is on that list. (I wonder who this shocker is…I’ll go out on a limb and throw Rickey Henderson’s name out there just so you hear it here first. To top it off, he was with Oakland during Canseco’s peak years so scratch your chin on that)

I really don’t know how much say-so the above people have, but I agree something needs to be done.

Will it be good for Major League Baseball if this list is revealed in full? Will we ever move on and forgive and forget as fans?

So this list I speak of is the one that contains 104 or so current and past players that have tested positive for PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) back in 2003. This was a survey test to bring the realization that a testing policy should be implemented and not to expose anyone. It also must be noted that the testing was conducted in 2003 when steroids were not illegal at that time.

Okay…we all know steroids are bad and are cheating. Testing was not being conducted in Major League Baseball prior to 2004. So what significance does this have now? You can’t change the past…you can’t take away records that were already broken. You can speculate and guess which players might have or might not have been on the juice by the change in their appearance or their sudden spike in numbers. Is that fair to assume or judge without proof?

The key word here is speculation…there is no valid proof taken from a drug test.

Another question I have is this…Are you going to tell me that if a player is revealed to have tested positive to a known banned substance, he serves his suspension or whatever punishment is required, that he will move on without further repercussions to his career?

I’ll answer a quick maybe…you see…an athlete can mess up, commit a crime, and do drugs, or all of the above…but time heals the wounds. If a player has more time to play, that gives the public more time to forgive and love him again. The public looks at it as adversity and a player fighting through it all. Well, what about those players who get busted towards the end of their career or just as they retire?

Will the public look at a player’s entire career and dissect it to the point they give him or her a fair chance to explain? I doubt it…

Is that pessimism or is that realism talking?

So tell me another thing…this list that contains 100+ players that have tested positive was supposed to be confidential or had a sealed court order on it correct? If that’s indeed the case, why the hell isn’t anyone being prosecuted for illegally releasing these names? I’m not a lawyer or anything but it seems to me that an investigation on how these documents were illegally obtained should be conducted and not so much as to what is in them.

-R

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