One story has dominated the baseball landscape since it came to light on Thursday.  Manny Ramirez’s fifty-game suspension for “a violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program” marks the first time that a big name has been caught out and he probably won’t be the last. 

The reaction to the news says a great deal about the way in which MLB has struggled to come to terms with the issue of banned substances. 

There’s no need to rake over old ground in any great detail.  The concise history of baseball’s relationship with drugs is that the sport collectively buried its head in the sand for years.  This has placed a question mark over the performances and achievements of an entire era and has left the upper echelons of MLB incapable of dealing with the issue.  Every incident leads to baseball being attacked from all sides, with MLB failing to protect itself.

A percentage of ballplayers take drugs, just as a percentage of athletes in all sports do.  That’s not a dirty secret and it shouldn’t come as any surprise.  It’s cheating and cheating takes place in all walks of life every single day. 

If 1,000 pupils take an exam, the chances are that one or two will try and cheat.  They need a good grade to get into university, they know they haven’t put the work in and are going to flunk it, so in desperation they try and get hold of the exam questions early.  It happens.  If fifty people apply for a job, some will be completely honest on their CV, some will be a little liberal with the truth and one or two will outright lie.  They know that they will be in severe trouble if they get the job and are found out, but they take that chance.

The same holds true in sports, regardless of the game being played.  Taking so-called performance-enhancing drugs is one perceived way to illegally gain an advantage (i.e. cheat); therefore there will always be people willing to risk it.  Baseball appears to be the favourite whipping boy for many, but other sports should bear this in mind before jumping on the baseball-bashing bandwagon.  Even the outward appearance of a ‘clean’ sport might hide a less wholesome truth.

Take football as an example.  A big match will be seen by millions on TV, the game will be captured by a multitude of cameras, every major incident will be replayed many times after the event and newspapers, radio shows and websites will discuss them for days afterwards. 

Despite being fully aware of the level of scrutiny they are under, a significant number of players cheat on a regular basis.  A striker may know that a defender’s outstretched leg didn’t quite catch him, but he will still flick his heels back, chuck himself to the ground and roll about to try and con the referee into awarding a penalty.  A player that gets a slight push in the chest can still be seen clutching his face and falling to the floor as if Manny Pacquiao has just landed a left hook on his jaw.  Although it won’t be a conscious thought in their mind at that moment, the player knows that the incident will clearly show he has cheated, but it doesn’t stop them trying to gain an advantage.

It is impossible that, within this culture, there are not a minority of footballers who take performance-enhancing drugs, even if they don’t get caught.  For a football fan like myself (although Norwich City are sorely testing my loyalty right now) to believe otherwise is to take a giant and unmerited leap of faith.

There will always be a minority that want to gain an illegal advantage and that means a drug-testing programme is a necessity.

There are three sides to a drug-testing programme.  The first is that the vast majority of players will not want to take drugs and the testing allows them to prove they do not (although sadly this is up for debate).  The second is that some players considering going down the drug route decide against it partly because the risk of being caught, and the punishment they will receive, is deemed too high.  Thirdly, there will always be some players who weigh up the risks and rewards and make a conscious decision to take drugs.  The testing is there to catch them and to punish them.

After years of inaction, the MLB of 2009 includes a strict and effective drug-testing programme.  If you have such a programme, you are going to catch people taking drugs.  The only way this can be avoided is if: a) not a single player takes drugs – a utopian vision that, as explained above, goes against human nature – or b) the programme is not effective and some players are able to use drugs without them being detected. 

The best PR company in the world couldn’t spin Manny Ramirez’s positive test into a completely positive story, but any organization with some foresight (i.e. the knowledge that some players will take drugs and that you are going to catch them) and a sensible approach would be able to draw positives from it. 

Clearly some media outlets will want to take this story down the “Shock! Horror! Baseball is gripped by drugs” route and milk it for all it’s worth.  However MLB should have a clear strategy in place for how they will handle the inevitable event of a star player testing positive.  If they’ve got one, it’s not been noticeable over the last few days.

Politicians and fans have called for baseball to clean up its act; why haven’t MLB taken ownership of the news and used it to highlight exactly what they have achieved in this regard?  Where are all the heavy hitters explaining that, far from being “a dark day for baseball”, the news actually shows the strict drug-testing programme is working?  Why has Bud Selig not acknowledged that a small minority will break the rules (knowingly or not) and that Raimrez’s positive test is proof that those players will be caught and severely punished?

The answer is that MLB is scared of its own shadow.  Selig knows they screwed up in the past and issuing anything more than a short factual statement could lead to people asking questions about previous conduct that he doesn’t want to answer.  Maybe the situation will only improve when Selig leaves his post, but baseball fans shouldn’t have to wait that long for those in charge to stand up for the sport they love. 

Raimrez’s positive test is a blow to the sport and such news will always create unwelcome headlines, but MLB should have been able to counter them.  If MLB continues to test players, the one certainty is that another notable player will be caught somewhere down the line. 

Sadly, it’s less certain whether MLB will deal with the situation any better than they have done this time.