Wipe a Season, Not an Unprovable Past

The Fabulous BALCO Boys are as done with in legal terms as they are not in certain moral terms. With sharp enough tongue as she pronounced sentence Judge Susan Illston observed, as the San Francisco Chronicle ascribed, that there is great frustration in the law allowing nothing tougher for Victor Conte and Greg Anderson than four and three months each federal imprisonment and home arrest, respectively.

"They were cheating, and you helped them cheat," Judge Illston admonished Conte. She betrayed neither understanding nor willingness to accept that BALCO's notorious wares, on the concrete evidence available, enhanced nothing beyond the pace at which their baseball-playing users amplified their physiques and disguised the amplifiers.

And within a day or so of the Conte/Anderson sentencing came the news that pitcher Felix Heridia was handed a 10-day suspension to be served from the opening of the 2006 season for violating the incumbent baseball steroids policy. His lifetime pitching record indicates that whatever was enhanced his pitching was not included. Last seen in the New York Mets' bullpen, you probably blinked while Heredia vaporized — thanks to a left thumb strain first and a shoulder aneurysm foremost, he spent all but three games worth of 2005 season on the disabled list.

These doings appeared two months after a pair of former Baltimore Orioles pronounced one solution for an incumbent Baltimore Oriole, his flunked drug test, and the suspension he served for it: vaporizing him from the record books entirely.

To Frank Robinson, it was a question of why we should impose upon baseball the burden of figuring out where to go, including asterisk. ("Where do you go back, stop, and say, 'Okay, when did he start using steroids?' To eliminate all that, and get the players' attention, you wipe the whole thing out.") To Curt Schilling, next to whom Rafael Palmeiro sat before the House Government Reform Committee last spring and lied, allegedly, it was a question of proving anything Palmeiro or any other high-statistic suspect had done previously was "under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs."

Elsewhere at the time, I wrote that there is no concurrent way to prove Palmeiro was unclean when he wagged the now-infamous finger, the positive test turning up well enough afterward on the evidence available, placing in doubt nothing but the regular season now past. "And if there is no way to know or prove the surety of Palmeiro's curriculum vitae before the incumbent season," I went on, "never mind no way to know or prove steroids' enhancement of anything above and beyond musculature, there should be no way for baseball government to sanction Palmeiro's complete disappearance."

Known by brand as Winstrol and by pharmacology as Stanozolol, the drug for which Palmeiro tested positive is deployed in human medicine to treat such as hereditary angioedema, a condition responsible for swelling attacks in the face, extremities, genitalia, bowel wall, and throat. It is also used to stimulate appetite, muscle mass, bone density, and red blood cells in ... dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, reptiles, and birds. We presume Palmeiro could distinguish at least between birds of a feather and the one on his uniform cap.

It is not necessarily to their job description or their competence that our Judge Illstons trouble themselves with facts such as those. But they might have their templates cleaner if handed a prospect Frank Robinson and Curt Schilling implied, upon agreement that Palmeiro warranted sanction, 10 games' suspension was insufficient, and a complete wipe of the record untenable without concrete evidence.

Why not eliminate only the statistics of that season in which Palmeiro or any player tests positive for any steroid? By itself, that could prove deterrent against further taint while warding further off the innuendo contingent, at least until the next great stain upon the game is alleged to have fallen.

Palmeiro could rejoin the exclusive 500/3000 club with veracity enough for remaining clean in subsequent tests. Our Judge Illstons can have stronger support against which to commit clarity over claptrap. And, we might achieve what Robinson and Schilling implied, while leaving those two customarily diligent men closed to accusations that they traded a season under question for a season of the witch.

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