Ted Green: Selig needs to redeem himself for allowing steroid era

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So we all know major leaguers did and still do drugs to get bigger, better and make more money, and to also cheat the game and ruin the record book, the holy grail of baseball.

Yeah, the boys have all their bases covered.

So now I have a question for both Deep Throat and for New York Times writer George S. Schmidt, who broke the story today that both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, those onetime Red Sox bookend power bats, revealing they are two of the names on the not-so-secret list of performance-enhancing abusers compiled by the commissioner’s office in 2003.

First let me say Deep Throat is what I’m calling whoever is leaking these names to reporters like Schmidt of the Times.

Now the question: How do you decide, either you, Deep Throat, or in concert with your trusted writer and conduits to the world, the scoop-hungry press, which players to bust, which to call out, which names you make public?

Why just the big fish? Why was it A-Rod first, a story broken by Selena Roberts? And now Manny and Big Papi, info apparently slipped surreptitiously to Schmidt? Why just the superstars?

Is it because their names make the biggest splash? Is there some other agenda involved, something personal?

Why is the release of these names so random and so arbitrary?

Deep Throat obviously has no overt rooting interest in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, having busted the biggest stars on both teams.

And since we’re asking questions, why in the name of a sport that has forfeited all credibility with the public in terms of its drug mess, won’t Deep Throat give up all the names, all 104 of them?

Since the list was compiled in ’03 before baseball had fully understandable rules in place to prohibit it, why does protecting 100 more PED’ers from six years ago even matter?

Today, every player in baseball except David Eckstein is guilty until proven innocent.

Why is Deep Throat protecting so many while hanging the others out for public ridicule? (Which, by the way, all 104 have richly earned.)

While you take those under advisement, the even more pertinent question seems to be, does anyone care anymore?

Baseball fans can only be hit over the head so many times with the steroid frying pan before their skulls harden up and they no longer feel the pain.

Is anyone surprised, much less enraged, by these ‘revelations’ anymore?

Manny is more popular with Dodger fans than he’s ever been. If Papi could actually see the ball to hit it, he’d still be a god in Boston. And if A-Rod ever gets a hit in the playoffs, he’ll be elected Mayor of New York if Derek Jeter doesn’t run for the office first.

Face it: The baseball public, paying and otherwise, is now totally innured to this whole awful, unending quagmire. In other words, we get it.

The players found a way to get an edge, a BIG edge, and they took it. Most fans now seem utterly resigned, even matter of fact about the drug culture in baseball, accepting it as a way of life, the way things are.

The Steroid Era.

Aaah, but at some point, the point having arrived several years ago, a commissioner with guts and brains, one who truly has the best interests of baseball in mind, would drop the pretense, the self-serving, face-saving, p.r.-spinning empty drivel. Instead he would step up and simply say ... enough, no mas, that’s it.

Not only should baseball continue rigorous testing for performance-enhancing steroids, but Bud Selig should have the moxie to use his power, invoke the commissioner’s ‘best interests’ clause, to order that mandatory blood testing for HGH, the Human Growth Hormone, be written into the standard player contract as a matter of course.

Bud, forget hiring scientists to find the test to detect HGH. One already exists. It’s called a little prick of the finger. It takes 30 seconds, max. You don’t feel a thing.

Nothing to hide, everything to gain. Most particularly, our respect.

Let the players’ union scream. Let them threaten. Let them blather on about privacy. Let them lawyer up. Let them sue. Let them take you to court.

About this issue, Jose Canseco had it 1000% right.

By refusing to allow blood testing, we all know the only thing the MLBPA is really protecting are the identities of the hundreds, probably the many hundreds of big leaguers still loading up on HGH, knowing it’ll never be discovered in standard urine tests.

Every time Selig runs to the first microphone or camera he sees, telling us how baseball has the most stringent testing and enforcement policies in professional sports, I literally want to lose my lunch. And so should you.

How unbelievably disingenuous when he knows perfectly well that the drug focus has shifted for the players, that the real problem now is the currently undetectable HGH.

So, Bud, at the end of the day, this blog is for you: The steroid genie is now so far out of the bottle, the only way back to integrity and believability is full and thorough drug testing, urine and blood.

I vote for Daniel Day-Lewis as new commissioner so he can tell everyone: There Will Be Blood. Plus some honest, democratic full disclosure from Deep Throat wouldn’t hurt either.

-- Ted Green

Green formerly covered sports for the L.A. Times. He is currently Senior Sports Producer for KTLA Prime News.