With major league baseball already losing the attention of the public eye, we were just hit with more news – Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz both tested positive for performance enhancing drugs back in 2003.  While from a personal standpoint this was not very shocking, it lends itself to an even bigger question with regards to baseball in America…

Who can we trust?

In a culture which loves to embrace its best-performing athletes as heroes, this unethical dishonesty becomes even more amplified.  So many of us have a favorite team or player with whom we enjoy their most thrilling moments of victory…or sulk during their most heart-wrenching defeats.  Then we discover that they’ve ‘cheated.’   

It’s been proven that we can’t trust the players.  They’ve proven that, as a whole, they are in cover-up mode.  Due to the fact that a good number of today’s rosters are filled with players who played during the ‘steroid era’, there’s only so much information that is going to be leaked from them.  The very players that emphatically claim that they are clean end up being the primary culprits.

Do you hear that, Bud? Sounds like you are losing more fans...

The occasional rumblings of positive testers that find their way to the media only magnifies the problem.  It almost appears that MLB is strategically planning the release of this information.  Here are the thoughts from some noted major leaguers:

Detroit Tigers (recently acquired) pitcher Jerrod Washburn:

“Coming out every couple months with a couple names here, a couple names there, it could go on for years and years and years. It reopens a wound we’re trying to close. I don’t know what can be done,”

Atlanta Braves third-baseman Chipper Jones:

“It’s like somebody wants to keep this on the tips of everybody’s tongues. And if that’s the case, I’d rather we just got it over with.”

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen:

“Can somebody in baseball — we’re all begging, people — get that stupid list out and move on. This is ridiculous; this is embarrassing; this is a joke. Whoever is there is there, get them out, and that’s it.”

Guillen is on point.  The only way that major league baseball stands a chance at (eventually) getting out of this mess is to release a full, comprehensive list of players who tested positive for PEDs…and then just stand back and let the chips fall where they may.  The number of reported offenders was tallied at 104 back in 2003.

For the sake of its future, major league baseball needs to think about its fans.  There are longstanding fans who have endured the countless revelations which have tarnished their most beloved players, as well as the game itself.  But now, it’s definitely past time for America’s pastime to handle this problem.  Somebody behind the scenes needs to man up.

Until that happens, we’ll all be left to ask the same question…

Who’s next?