A-ROD, STEROIDS & "OWNING" UP

Alex Rodriguez should sue! Someone in Major League Baseball and/or at the medical testing lab revealed confidential medical information in a deliberate, and successful, attempt to cause A-Rod severe mental anguish. That no names of 103 other major league players who took, and failed, the same test appeared in print or over the airwaves is testament to a discriminatory effort to malign the highest paid player in professional baseball. And though a lawsuit would not vitiate his behavior for using banned substances, it would aid in revealing the massive hypocrisy of America's sportswriters, talk show hosts, politicians and those who have publicly castigated Rodriguez for "shaming the game."

As criminal cases pend against athletes for lying to the very Congress that lies to the American people every chance they get, politicians and the media punditry, sports and otherwise, salivate at their opportunities to rail against the lying, selfish, baseball cheats. And after the Jose Canseco blockbuster book that blew the lid off of massive steroid use in Major League Baseball, this very punditry stood lockstep in agreement that the baseball owners knew what was going on after the 1994 baseball strike. According to the sports mavens, the realization that formerly sub-par human beings suddenly producing above-par super human stats was not lost on the owners.

However, baseball's owners and managers have yet to be called before Congress to testify, under oath, what did they know about steroid use and when did they know it! With all of the turmoil that has transpired in the United States in the past year as experienced by the nation's financial bottom line, surely Congress cannot believe that a player would lie and cheat to gain an edge, but that an owner would not. It seems apparent that the use of steroids in Major League Baseball was not a 'players only' well-kept secret. And as some players face the possibility of criminal convictions for perjury, the punditry cries for their collective scalps in order to maintain "the integrity of the game." But if they refuse to echo that hue and cry with calls for the owners to testify, by subpena if necessary, just the way the tobacco heads, insurance heads, auto, banking and investment CEOs were compelled to do, then the word integrity should be permanently stricken from their vocabulary.