The Hope of Opening Day

Major League Baseball threw out its first steroid abuser Sunday, even before the first pitch of the 2005 season. Instead of letting fans savor using “world champion” in the same sentence as “Boston Red Sox,” baseball management shined the opening-day spotlight back on its winter of discontent.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig undoubtedly wanted to use Sunday’s first game, between the Red Sox and Yankees, to send a clear message to Congress that the sport was cleaning up its act. So before the game he announced a 10-day suspension for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ center fielder, Alex Sanchez.

Who? Selig’s message was muddied at best because the first official casualty of the sport’s steroid-abuse scandal is no big hitter -- he stands 5 feet 10, weighs just 179 pounds and has hit only four home runs in 1,351 at-bats.

The biggest names in baseball’s recent home run derby have yet to explain what role steroids played in their exploits.

Baseball has a history of insisting that fans forgive its institutional sins, including regular eruptions of labor-management unrest. Last year, a record 73 million tickets were sold, so the sport’s popularity somehow endures. What’s more, baseball could set another attendance record this year, particularly if San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds (who remains under his own cloud of suspicion) returns later in the season to continue chasing home run kings Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron.

Selig, though, has shown a glimmer of recognition that it’s unhealthy for a sport to get more coverage in news stories than on the sports page. That’s why baseball’s new promotional campaign focuses on passionate fans rather than players and owners.

But it will take more than 30-second television commercials to erase ugly memories of leaked grand jury testimony and the telling silences during a congressional hearing on steroid abuse. And baseball officials will have to target more than second-tier players such as Sanchez, who has all the appearance of a scapegoat.

That the passion for this game still burns may mean there’s something about baseball around opening day that makes everything -- even World Series rings for the hapless Chicago Cubs -- seem possible.