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Could outrage over cycling, track spill over into MLB? Not.

Baseball Betting Lines

08/07/2006 -

Cycling and track and field yanked their biggest stars off the marquee in a matter of days after they were implicated in doping cases. Now that those sports have turned summer's center stage back over to baseball, can fans still seething over the use of performance-enhancers expect the same kind of accountability?

The short answer: No.

Think back to May, before Tour de France champion Floyd Landis and world 100-meter sprinter Justin Gatlin got busted for too much testosterone in their systems. Most of the outrage at the time was reserved for Barry Bonds.

San Francisco's suspicious slugger was greeted by asterisks or crude, hand-lettered signs at some visiting ballparks and by fans dressed as syringes at others. He was hot in pursuit of Babe Ruth's career home run mark at the time, but it was already being labeled a hollow achievement. Bonds was roundly booed everywhere but at home.

Already portrayed the surly villain in a fast-selling book called ``Game of Shadows,'' he was the centerpiece of a witch hunt ordered up by embarrassed major league baseball officials and the target of another grand jury investigation. The silver lining, if you want to call it that, was that Bonds was a shadow of his former power-hitting self at the plate, too, looking less and less like a lightning rod with every at-bat and more and more like a warmed-over controversy.

Some of the heat was deflected early in June, when federal investigators raided the home of Diamondbacks reliever Jason Grimsley in Scottsdale, Ariz., and laid out enough pharmaceuticals to remind us again that everybody in the game, pitchers as well as hitters, small fish and big ones alike, was worthy of suspicion.

For all that, there was only one other name on the blotter when commissioner Bud Selig showed up at the All-Star game last month, trumpeting MLB's tougher steroid policy. It belonged to New York Mets minor leaguer Yusaku Iriki, who counted as a big-league scalp because he'd been on the club's 40-man roster when caught.

``I'm happy where we are,'' Selig said at the time, ``with the drug-testing program.''

Chances are he's even happier now, having seen the turmoil that cycling and track brought on themselves with testing programs that are much tougher, more effective and certainly more transparent than MLB's version.

In addition to being two of the highest-profile performers, Landis and Gatlin were also counted among the most respected and least suspected members of their professions. And when athletes with that kind of skill and drive, on top of an unassailable work ethic, are lured into risking everything to reach the top of the pyramid, chances are the next level down is teeming with cheaters.

Selig appointed former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to head up an investigation into that very question at the end of March. The commission has no subpoena power and no timetable to produce a report. One player after another has rebuffed requests to appear, and even club officials have been less than eager to cooperate.

When asked for a progress report at that same All-Star Game, Selig said about Mitchell, ``He's very independent. I don't hear from him.''

The same could be said about baseball's effort to get a handle on its drug problem from the start. The game first denied it had one, then reluctantly drew up a formal policy. It didn't add teeth until Congress threatened to put in some.

While MLB's program is now comparable in most ways to the NFL's, it tests ballplayers less frequently for fewer substances and is way more forgiving than track, cycling or any of the other sports that have turned the crime and punishment responsibilities to the U.S. and World Anti-Doping agencies.

Both U.S. leagues also retain administration over the testing process. That alone causes concerns for Don Catlin, director of the UCLA Olympic lab and the man credited with devising countless anti-doping tests.

When asked by the New York Daily News if he worries that the pro leagues want just enough testing to put up a good front, Catlin replied:

``Yeah, you can't help but worry about that if you go walking around thinking about it. What sport-minded person wants to read about his player having a positive test?'' he added. ``It's the last thing he wants.''

MLB and the NFL are banking on that, despite all the outrage stirred up the past two weeks by the charges that laid Landis and Gatlin low. Fans may say one thing, but they vote with their feet. And as you read this, baseball attendance is humming along at close to all-time highs levels and football is about to pull the curtain up on what is almost guaranteed to be another record season.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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