The New York Daily News today published 5 articles which make up  “a radical five-point plan to rid baseball of its steroid scourge once and for all.”

What’s interesting, is none of the articles come from the journalist who is usually held up as their hardest hitting and their lead expert on sport.  If this 5 point plan were really the answer, perhaps Mike Lupica should have taken part.  But, OK, let’s look at them piece by piece because though some are interesting, some are clearly written to fill column space as we wait for the season to begin.

The first point comes from amiable Filip Bondy, and suggests that Bud Selig resign. Its not shocking that this is where the News begins, because its a popular idea.  Honestly, as poor a job of Selig does in speaking about the game, or in making the PR decisions that are needed for the game, he has, by and large, moved the game in the right direction.  He just forgot to bring the fans along.  This little economic downturn will change that I expect, as he will have to bring in some innovative thinkers to keep baseball as strong as it has been over the last dozen years.

Bondy points first to the fact that Selig couldn’t save baseball from the strike in 1994.  Who could have? Its what has happened since then that speaks more to Selig than that moment in 1994- which was 15 years ago.  There are true baseball fans that don’t even remember that.

Bondy’s suggestions for replacements are interesting, the most likely of the bunch might be George Will.  Still, I don’t think of Selig as the poster-child for the steroid era.  I think he has done a terrible job navigating it.  But I think he is like older fans who I have come to know that still want to worship Mickey Mantle.  They are looking for innocence in a place it didn’t exist then, let alone now.

The second piece in the 5 point attack comes from good guy John Harper.  While I agree a little more with this piece in terms of its reasoning, and his indictment of the head of the union, his suggestion for replacement is ridiculous.  The next collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the players association and MLB will be over a salary cap.  You can’t have someone leading that negotiation who hasn’t been in the throws of that kind of negotiating before, nor can you have someone of Hank Aaron’s age.  Sure, he would be a great spokesman.  And perhaps he should be made the #2 guy in the org.  But the suggestion of Hank Aaron reminds me of the choice of Gene Upshaw who allowed NFL players to play with unguaranteed contracts, and largely ignored retired players.  Not that Aaron would do that, but the players association has survived for years as the strongest union in the US by always having strong pro-union men lead them.   Hank Aaron is a suggestion thats good for print.

The point that Harper makes that can’t be stressed enough is that the union in fighting drug testing was looking out for the players wallet, not their long term good.  Like Upshaw, they didn’t care what happened down the line, after they retired.

While Anthony McCarron’s piece, the third finger of the plan keys into my favorite suggestion, naming the hidden names, it would be immoral and illegal for either the union or MLB to name those names. None of us should want tests we took under the promise of anonymity to be made public.  Its just wrong.  But, do I think that if those names became public through proper channels that it would help baseball?  Yes I do. Why? Because of the stupid quotes like that one from Tommy Lasorda  that I quoted yesterday from Blue Heaven. Lasorda equated taking any performance enhancing drug with being a bad person, and the more names we discover, the more we will realize that it wasn’t the players that were bad, it was the system.

I rooted for Mark McGwire to break the home run record in 1998.  I may not be sitting here writing this if he hadn’t.  I think if the other names could come out, that might make those who rooted for him like me feel a little less hurt by the seeming truth about that record. McGwire wasn’t the outlaw of the group.  He was just typical in his usage perhaps, but special in his skills.  It was the era.

It may be a gray area, and one we really can’t know.  But I distinguish between players who seemed to use PED’s to just stay on the field or to succomb to pressure because of a big contract, and those that went out of their way to find superior product to make themselves into record breakers– and example such as Bonds.  I also don’t like liers.  Never have.  McGwire avoided, but didn’t stand up and point fingers or change his story.  He did the best that he knew how to do.

If you only go to and read one article from this post, the one you should read in Nathanial Vinton’s.   Its right on the money with how you give people back the innocence, and create effective punishments. He also make a great point here:

“If baseball is worried about what the drug scandals are doing to its image, its budget hasn’t reflected much anxiety. The league’s $3 million contribution to the Partnership for Clean Competition in the month after the Mitchell Report’s release was just 1/2,000th of MLB’s reported $6 billion in revenue.”

The other key is the baseball has not yet come to the point where it has accepted the World Anit-Doping Associations (WADA) testing policy or standards.  When that happens, then we will know both MLB and the union care about this.

The last piece by Jim Rich suggests a zero tolerance policy, sort of.  Really, you still get a second chance.  The thing is, if the sport adopted the World Anti Doping Policy, it could really be a real zero tollerance policy because the tests would be more accurate, and the review process would be better.  WADA understands the difference for the different kinds of positives, and the difference between something that might be a steroid and something that mixed with body chemistry will cause a positive steroid test.

I know not many of you have time to read all 5.  The Daily News brings up a wealth of interesting ideas. Finding the time to wade through them and take the good out, is an arduous process. Still, I’m interested to hear what each of you think about the suggestions put forth.  Even if its just the points I’ve tried to touch on.