Forget Steroids Past. Cleanup Steroids Future.

Ben K. over at RAB writes a bit about Angel Presinal and the Daily News story about his apparent PED pushing.  The conclusion?

Those of us who care, even a little bit, about the drug issue may find a current scandal all the motivation for a better fix.

I agree completely.  And, I think Presinal's name itself sounds like a steroid, which gives me pause. I started thinking about a better fix last week and was reminded after listening to WFAN in the car a few days ago.  Evan Roberts, who somehow has been mentioned twice in this space, was discussing the fact that there is little chance that PED testing will become more strict in baseball without a huge fight from the union and a probable work stoppage.  Evan's point was that he didn't want to see a work stoppage in baseball over the steroids issue. I was a bit struck by that comment.  In 1994, there was a work stoppage.  Does anyone really talk about it now?  Not really.  In 1994, there were likely guys doing steroids.  Does anyone really talk about that now?  You bet. What would have happened if, in the winter before the 1999 season, Bud Selig decided to lock the players out until they came to an agreement on steroid testing?  Chances are, we'd be seeing a bit less than we are right now and testing would have evolved through the coming years as the kinks were worked out. Instead, here we are dealing with steroids from the nineties, not the strike, in the every day news.  People are yelling and screaming to release the other 103 names from the 2003 survey testing.  Baseball is so stuck in trying to reveal the past that everyone is forgetting that the future doesn't look that much better. From the article Ben quoted over at RAB:

According to a former baseball scout, who worked with players who trained with Presinal in the Dominican, Presinal provided some players with steroids. The former scout declined to be named in this story but says that players refer to Presinal as “The Cleaner,” someone who can rid traces of steroids from the players’ urine before a drug test. “He puts them through a cycle and then they flush the body out,” the former scout said. “If you’re afraid of testing positive, this is the guy to go to.”

This seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?  Steroids are illegal which means that the people who make them stand to profit less once they are detectable.  That leaves one of two options: figure out how to flush it out of the system or make a new steroid that they can't test for yet. I think we can be confidant that both of these options are a reality.  The current testing program in place in Major League Baseball likely misses not only HGH, which isn't detectable in urine, but the latest designer steroids.  Blood tests would likely be more revealing and could be kept on file to check in later years, providing a deterant to the latest undetectable steroid. The only way this type of testing would get into place would be for the union to okay it and, as Evan Roberts said, that probably wouldn't happen without a work stoppage.  I would rather not see a lockout or a strike but I don't want to be hearing about steroids for the next fifteen years, either.  Baseball is at it's most profitable right now and it's surviving despite all of the steroid news.  A work stoppage for the sake of cleaning up the game (assuming the owners stick to their guns) wouldn't have any long term negative effect.  If anything, it might actually give Joe Fan the impression that someone actually cares about the game as much as he does. At the current pace, we may never get that feeling again.