MLB is Singing "Kumbaya" on the Steroids Issue

If you somehow need to induce vomiting in your household and don't have ipecac handy, read this article and wonder aloud whether Michael Clayton had a role in this, whether MLB's investigators have Congressmen Henry Waxman and Tom Davis on film patronizing The Emperor's Club, whether Barry Bonds will emerge from his performance-enhancing drugs force field of a jail and whether those named in the Mitchell Report were lucky because they get amnesty. Of course, the deal that the Lords of Baseball struck with the players' union provides that there won't be another Mitchell Report ever again.

Okay, so the baseball industry wanted to finish the job, get past the steroids mess, agree to "stricter" drug testing and end the talk and speculation of the alleged bad stuff that went on in the past. I guess, deep down, that it's all well and good in the eyes of many, and that something like this settlement was inevitable given the awful circus that the baseball industry (and included in that are the teams, the players, the alleged journalists who cover the game) helped create for us from 1994 (the year that a strike served to cancel the season) to the present.

Perhaps.

Because it appears that the settlement doesn't close the window -- at all -- on the players' opportunities to use HGH because the accord doesn't provide for blood testing for HGH. And the players' conduct would appear to be like that of flood water -- if you don't put up sandbags and adjust your grading on your property to thwart it and send it off your property and away from your house -- it will go precisely where you do not want it to go.

No matter what Bud Selig and the owners wish for.

The players' union has outnegotiated them again, in what could be one of their biggest victories ever. Why? Because the public and the owners' had the players in an awful place -- those with the power to make laws and the fans were solidly on the owners' side. And the owners let them escape. Okay, so amnesty in some form might have been part of any agreement. But not to test for HGH?

It's like signing a settlement agreement in the world of DVD's and Blue Rays saying that you're only going to try to sell Betamax. And if you're too young to have heard of something which was thought to be the next best thing (after the 8-track), you'll still get my point. Did the owners really agree to test for anything substantive -- or just for things that are no longer relevant? The article isn't clear, and the owners and players, it seems, did agree to a significant amount of confidentiality, which is understandable (especially if you're a part of either side).

So, in the end, it's hard to say what exactly they will be testing for. The lack of transparency suggests that it's not enough. But the leading Democrat and Republican who held the hearing on Roger Clemens are satisfied.

So we got that going for us.

Which is nice.

Right?