When it comes to drugs, baseball shouldn’t police itself

Another fine day for Roger Clemens. Now, he finds out the FBI has started investigating whether he lied to Congress a couple of weeks ago when he testified about the allegations he used steroids and human growth hormone a few years ago. (Do we really need an investigation to know the answer to that?)
What Clemens has been through lately reminds me of that line from the movie “Hoosiers,” when the townspeople were voicing their displeasure with coach Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.
“Sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day,” Opal Fleener says, “but mister, you ain’t seen a ray of light since you got here.”
Yep, it’s been a trying few weeks for Clemens, ever since the Mitchell report came out. For that matter, it’s been a trying time for baseball in general.
For the most part, I’ve been happy with what I’ve heard from baseball officials, that they’re aiming to clean up the game and keep illegal performance-enhancing drugs away. But I have been somewhat disturbed by commissioner Bud Selig’s claim on a couple of occasions that baseball doesn’t need an outside, independent body to conduct drug testing.
Selig’s claim is that Dr. Bryan Smith, MLB’s independent program administrator, is best suited to run the program, but he needs more independence to do so.
It sounds sort of OK, but I would be much more comfortable with an entity completely independent of baseball doing the testing. Baseball’s reputation is now so sullied that any perceived connection between baseball and its drug testers would be asking only for more speculation and allegations that the sport is trying to hide something, which it was obviously trying to do throughout the past decade or so. Left to police itself, baseball failed miserably. Let’s take any question out of the equation.

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