Baseball Hides Its Complicity in the Crime

In the stands were 39,044 people who thought they were paying good money to witness genuine history.

Baseball knew different.

On their feet were 39,044 people in a three-minute standing ovation for a player who had supposedly reached a milestone with character and class.

Baseball knew different.

Cameras flashed and fireworks exploded on that July night in Seattle in an apparently worthy embrace of Baltimore’s Rafael Palmeiro as he doubled into the left-field corner for his 3,000th hit.

Baseball knew different.

But baseball wasn’t telling.

While its fans were keeping tradition, baseball was keeping a secret, deceiving those who trusted it most, betraying those who loved it best.

Baseball knew Rafael Palmeiro was dirty for more than two months before Monday’s 10-game steroid suspension.

Baseball knew he had tested positive for a drug so strong, it once put hair on the chins of East German women.

Baseball knew he was performing with a body containing a substance that was not only against the rules, but against the law.

Yet baseball said nothing as Palmeiro’s record-chasing presence sold thousands of tickets, drew hundreds of thousands of TV viewers, and even induced a congratulatory call from President Bush.

Baseball said nothing until after the All-Star game, after the 3,000 hit, after the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

Palmeiro is a cheater.

But in hiding his crime, baseball may be the bigger cheat.

“Baseball wanted to fill the stadiums, set the records, smack the ball around,” said Steven Ungerleider, an Oregon researcher and an anti-doping expert. “It’s shocking, it’s pathetic, it’s appalling.”

The saddest part is, baseball was just following its own misguided rules, the delay in the announcement being part of the drug agreement between the league and union.

Shows you how much either of them wants to clear up steroids.

“This cries out desperately for a policy and procedure that is transparent,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, a New York University professor and steroid expert. “Right now, I think baseball just wishes this problem would disappear.”

From the time Palmeiro tested positive in May, until the announcement of a suspension Monday, his problems essentially did disappear.

As with Olympians, who live under the sports world’s toughest drug testing laws, Palmeiro’s drug sample was divided into two containers. When the first sample tested positive, the second sample was tested.

At that point, if an Olympian’s samples are both positive, the athlete is immediately suspended for two years pending appeal, and an announcement is made.

But baseball players are allowed to go through the entire appeals process in secret, and no announcement is made until the judgment is final.

So it takes baseball two months to inform the paying public while it takes the Olympic folks ... would you believe one week?

Last summer, in the Athens Olympics’ most prestigious event, Russian Irina Korzhanenko won the women’s shotput at the ancient site in Olympia.

But she tested positive for the same substance that was found in Palmeiro, a particularly potent steroid known as stanolozol.

A week after her event, with the Olympics still in full stride, at the worst possible moment for such bad publicity, Korzhanenko was publicly suspended and her gold medal was stripped.

While baseball waits until the best parts of its summer party are over.

“We believe strongly if baseball took this seriously, they would honor the WADA code,” said Ungerleider, referring to the World Anti-Doping Agency.

As currently constructed, baseball’s appeal process not only hides product defects to the consumer, but also the competition.

Think opponents would have treated Palmeiro differently if they knew he was appealing a positive steroid test? Maybe pitch the old guy a little closer?

“Baseball has been cheating, and now they’re living on borrowed time,” Ungerleider said.

Indeed, with the words, “consumer fraud” suddenly bouncing into play, an impatient Congress will take a closer look at baseball’s drug policy, and don’t be surprised if Palmeiro will be the straw that breaks the agreement’s back.

If they allow one of their best players to knowingly play dirty for two months, how can we again trust them? And how can Congress allow them to continue to sell smoke and mirrors?

(Of course, lawmakers will have to do a hook slide around President Bush, that noted steroids warrior who refused to condemn Palmeiro after the suspension because a spokesman noted that Palmeiro was the president’s friend.)

“Baseball should get out of this business, they don’t have the expertise to do it, they need to let someone else handle it,” Wadler said of drug regulation. “They hire somebody to build the stadiums and grow the grass, they need to hire experts to test for drugs.”

Until then, coming to a stadium near you, a game-winning homer hit by a juiced batter knowingly taking his last hacks before suspension.

Or, perhaps, a World Series hero who, it turns out later, tested positive in August.

How can baseball insist its players be honest if it doesn’t demand the same of itself?

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.