BASEBALL IGNORED SIGNALS FROM PITTSBURGH DRUG TRIAL

Performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. A pattern of clubhouse abusers.
Why are mouths agape over this?

"It shouldn't be a surprise," Jerry Johnson said.

Seventeen years ago, he heard such stories routinely. He marched such
story-tellers to the witness stand in a federal case and national-media
circus that was a big deal to apparently everyone but baseball's
commissioner and the players union. Dave Parker, Keith Hernandez, Lonnie
Smith, Jeffrey "Penitentiary Face" Leonard and Dale Berra were just a few
of the stars called to the stand by the U.S. District Attorney then known
as J. Alan Johnson.

You remember those three infamous, inexorably linked words:

Pittsburgh.

Drug.

Trials.

Johnson hears now about Jose Canseco howling that 85 percent of all
major-leaguers use steroids, about Ken Caminiti (along with others)
lamenting the figure is closer to half, and the lawyer looks out his
Pittsburgh office window to Grant Street. He thinks back 17 years to the
Federal Courthouse, the parade of stars, the words of one particular
witness. He remembers John Milner and the red juice.

The last player to testify in U.S. v. Curtis Strong, this particular
one-time Pirates and Mets member talked about getting a liquid amphetamine
from the locker of "Willie."

"Willie Mays?" asked the defense attorney.

"The Great One, yeah," replied Milner.

The trial of Chef Curt, the former Philadelphia Phillies caterer and
cocaine supplier to National League stars, dealt mostly with the drug that
carries a very intriguing street name among today's youths: baseball.
Indeed, Johnson brought this case and others against alleged small-time
dealers because of coke sales in Pittsburgh that just so happened to
involve some rather famous users. Strong's defense attorney, Adam O.
Renfroe, who later admitted to be a longtime cocaine user, tried to shine a
spotlight on baseball's seamy underside. So he got Milner to testify about
red juice coming from the great Mays and greenies, a tablet form of
amphetamine, coming from Bill Madlock and future Hall of Famer Willie
Stargell in the Pirates' clubhouse. Indeed, the stuff was everywhere.

Is Everywhere.

Nine of every 10 major-leaguers are taking some kind of stimulant before
each game, so Caminiti and another former player told Sports Illustrated.
Greenies, caffeine pills, ephedrine (the stuff found in the blood of dead
football players Korey Stringer and Rashidi Walker last year) - how about a
little something before or after batting practice? Going without an
amphetamine or stimulant is known among the fellas as "playing naked."

Baseball's emperors have no clothes, and, figuratively, their players feel
they have none, either. The game had its chance to address the clubhouse users.

"The information was certainly there, and it was public if they wanted to
rely on it," Johnson said. In fact, when Milner opened the lid on the red
juice, the reporters turned that Grant Street courtroom into a scene from a
1940s movie: "They started running for the door."

Johnson won't go so far as to say baseball dropped the ball on drug testing
- - it's a Constitutional, freedoms argument to a lawyer like him - but he
will point out that NFL officials attended the trial. Two years later, they
instituted their own policy. By the time they reached a new bargaining
agreement with the players union in 1994, the league launched a
substance-abuse testing system.

The NBA tests, too. Shoot, there are even tests for college and high school
athletes. So there's no good reason for the NHL and baseball to get special
exemptions, no matter how reliable urine and blood exams are.

"My conclusion is, only stupid and careless people get caught," began Dr.
Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor and expert in performance-enhancing
drugs. "People with a lot of money can hire people ... to make sure they
don't flunk drugs tests. Drug testing is done mainly for public relations,
to make the media feel good and fans feel good.

"And in baseball, you don't have to be careful - you can take any damn
thing. It's carte blanche."

No rules means the same as don't ask, don't tell. Yet Canseco and others
are starting to tell, starting to shine that spotlight on the steroids and
greenies underbelly of baseball. Let's not even delve into the issue of
cocaine, the drug that prompted only four suspensions in baseball's past
decade and got such free rein post-1985 that it basically torched the
potential Hall of Fame careers of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry -
half of that aforementioned suspension class.

It's time for the lords of baseball and the heads of the world's most
powerful union to get with the PR program, pretend at least that they are
worried about the health of their workers and their game. Do something to
level a playing field where the non-users want to prove their cleanliness.

"I've been a baseball fan a long time, and it offends me that guys are
breaking records of my sports heroes where I personally don't feel they
could hold their jockstraps," Yesalis continued. "But this still will just
be a blip on the radar for two weeks, then go away. Nothing will be done.
I'm not happy that I think that way, either."

History shows it to be true, right here in Pittsburgh.

Baseball closes its eyes to red flags and red juice.