Miami Student

Issue date: 3/22/05 Section: OpEd Page

I've decided to go ahead and throw my hat into the fray concerning steroids in baseball, but I'm not going to talk about which players are using steroids. I'm not going to talk about the House Committee on Government Reform. I'm not going to talk about Bud Selig or Donald Fehr. And I am definitely not going to talk about baseball's new steroid policy.Instead, I want to focus on the owners and general managers of baseball teams - the front office. Much has been made of San Diego Padres General Manager Kevin Towers's revelation that he suspected the late Ken Caminiti of using steroids. Caminiti won the MVP award in 1996 but later admitted to using steroids. Towers has expressed grief and regret over the fact that he never confronted Caminiti about the drug use and has said he feels some sense of guilt over Caminiti's death. It's not Kevin Towers that I want to talk about either, though.The real issue in baseball has been the response of several other front office figures in the weeks following Towers' admission. In essence, many of the league's front office personnel said that even when they had suspicions that a player was using steroids, they could do nothing about it. What they mean is that they didn't want to do anything about it. The thrust of the argument that the front office personnel around the league are advancing is that because steroids were not banned by baseball they had no recourse. Moreover, many GM's feared that if they confronted a star player about steroids, it would destroy the trust between a player and the front office, and in turn, no one would be better off.My primary objection to this line of reasoning is this: how can GM's claim they had no recourse if they suspected a player of steroid use? Anabolic steroids have been illegal in the United States throughout the 1980s and '90s, when allegations of steroid use in baseball first began to surface. If anyone in the front office felt strongly that steroids were being used by players and were concerned, the appropriate authorities could have been alerted. Towers has admitted that he never confronted Caminiti because his team was on the way to winning the National League crown and the Padres were making more money than ever. This explanation seems a lot closer to the truth than other excuses. "If baseball hasn't banned steroids, I'm not obligated to do anything as long as we're winning" was probably the typical GM logic.It comes down to whether or not front office personnel were prepared to step up and take responsibility for looking the other way while their players were using illegal drugs. I'm tired of hearing GMs and owners of baseball clubs talk about how frustrating it was to suspect a player of steroid use but not be able to do anything because baseball didn't have a steroid policy. The United States had a steroid policy that would have worked just fine - if only baseball had elected to use it.

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