It’s time for players to step up

Maybe the most disquieting image created by the 409-page Mitchell Report is Roger Clemens being injected in the buttocks with steroid-filled syringes wielded by Brian McNamee, a former strength and conditioning coach for the Toronto Blue Jays.

That alone is enough to cause nightmares.

Equally disturbing was the refusal of all but two active players -- Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees and Frank Thomas of the Blue Jays -- to cooperate with investigators amassing evidence about the use of steroids.

The silent players come off as the bad guys for their alleged misdeeds and their refusal to answer questions. In a sport filled with arrogant, bumbling owners and a commissioner who is several fathoms beyond his depth, ending up as the villain in this lack-of-morality play is a remarkable achievement.

Bill Veeck, the renegade promoter, owner and author, wrote in “The Hustler’s Handbook” that, “It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball’s wounds are self-inflicted.”

His book was published in 1965.

Veeck is long gone, but the truth of his assessment endures.

The Mitchell Report, while often sobering and sometimes persuasively detailed with copies of checks and money orders players allegedly wrote to their drug suppliers, has some flaws.

It contains gobs of hearsay, which can be admissible in court under some circumstances but sometimes not. A good lawyer could probably skewer passages such as the statement that “McNamee knew the substance was Winstrol because the vials Clemens gave him were so labeled.” Labeling a vial as containing Winstrol or champagne doesn’t make it so.

Some implications were second-hand and flimsy, such as Larry Bigbie fingering former teammate Brian Roberts as having admitted in 2004 that Roberts had injected himself with steroids.

The motives of McNamee and of Kirk Radomski, the former New York Mets clubhouse attendant who is the other prime source of information in the report, merit scrutiny too. The more information they turn over the lighter their punishments from federal prosecution may be, so they have incentive to fling a lot of mud and hope some of it sticks.

But eventually, it comes back to the players.

If the players sought by investigators hadn’t used banned substances, why didn’t they hire lawyers and state their innocence?

If they were guilty, why not confess and ask for the mercy the American public so often grants celebrities who show a dollop of contrition?

Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn., said he did not urge players “tacitly or explicitly not to cooperate” and urged them to seek their own counsel.

Maybe it was fear, not Fehr, that silenced them.

Because of the stubbornness of the union, baseball’s drug testing policies, twice toughened in the last few years, still have little serious bite.

As documented in the Mitchell Report, Dodgers executives suspected that Eric Gagne didn’t naturally come by his newfound arm strength and velocity. But they couldn’t order him to take a test that would have determined if his fastball’s oomph came from a syringe.

That’s assuming they wanted to know. They didn’t mind profiting off his saves and sales of T-shirts with his menacing likeness and trademark “Game Over” slogan.

As it now stands, players are tested a minimum of twice each year, once at the beginning of spring training and again during the season or playoffs. A maximum of 60 off-season tests are permitted, with additional tests allowed only after a show of reasonable cause in the case of an individual player.

Mitchell recommended mandatory, unannounced testing that would take place year-round, as is the case in the United States for athletes in Olympic sports. The players association is likely to rebuff attempts to beef up the current policy, citing infringement on privacy and civil rights.

Fehr said Thursday the union would agree to subject players to valid urine tests for human growth hormone, the use of which looms as the sport’s next big problem. However, no reliable urine test is available now and it’s unclear when a test will be devised and proven to the union’s satisfaction.

The union will be under pressure to take a more vigorous role in combating drugs, and it should agree to allow testing more frequently. It’s the right thing to do and would help end the so-called Steroid Era.

So far, fans have been incredibly forgiving. They grumble about asterisks and tainted records, but even though the Dodgers were heavily implicated in the Mitchell Report a club spokesman said Friday no fan had called to cancel season tickets or chastise management. Things were quiet at the Angels’ office, too, a spokesman there said.

The Mitchell Report didn’t kill baseball. The Dodgers will draw nearly 4 million people next season, the 50th anniversary of their migration from Brooklyn. The New York Yankees will again top 4 million in their final season at the House that Ruth Built. The Red Sox will sell out every pricey seat at Fenway Park.

“Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it,” Hall of Famer Bill Terry said a long time ago. That, too, still holds true.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com.

To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.