JIM LITKE Baseball's hypocrisy: Weak drug policy now bad business

It's about time they come clean.
We're not just talking about the ballplayers anymore, welcome as the news was Tuesday that the union's executive board instructed its leaders to reopen the collective bargaining agreement and negotiate a tougher drug-testing policy.
Because it's high time, too, for the suits running baseball to come forward and admit complicity in a scandal they did little to stop and everything to profit from.
(Memo to Bud Selig & amp; Co.: Don't even think about using the "I-didn't-know-what-was-in-that-stuff" defense. Barry Bonds has dibs on that one and, frankly, 90 percent of America is still holding its side; few would survive a second laughing fit of such magnitude.)
Sport has a real concern about sponsorship
Telling the truth might be its own reward, but in this case, it could be good for business, too. Baseball acknowledged as much when chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said plans to market Bonds' pursuit of the home run record were put on hold because MasterCard International, the sponsor it was courting for the campaign, canceled a meeting.
Good thing, too. The San Francisco Giants' slugger has 703 homers, 52 shy of Hank Aaron's record, and given the unprecedented tear Bonds has been on, he could pass Aaron late next year or in 2006. And the only thing worse than stopping a game and dragging a stage onto the field to celebrate Bonds' achievement would be hiring Ashlee Simpson to sing the tribute. Even the muckety-mucks at MLB understand that.
"We continue to assess the ramifications that these issues will have on our business," DuPuy said. "It's another reason why we need to restore the confidence of not only our fans, but of our partners."
It's a step in the right direction, but only a small one, to be sure.
Four years ago, Selig ended a conversation about a suspicious spike in home runs by pointing out that a handful of big-name pitchers were about to return from the disabled list. As if that was going to put the numbers back in line.
"Let's just see how this plays out," the commissioner said.
We have -- and the news isn't good, worse still if you believe in conspiracies.
Before the strike-shortened 1994 season, only one season in baseball history averaged two home runs per game or higher. Since then, every season has averaged two or more.
If you no longer believe that's a coincidence, welcome to the club. Just remember the owners were charter members. Some time after the 1998 season, they reasoned that if one Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa duel sold that many tickets, staging dozens of them would sell even more.
So, Selig granted waivers to new ballparks to build short home-run porches, and the owners installed NASA-quality video machines, batting cages and weight rooms in their clubhouses. Strike zones shrunk. Bats were made to a hardness that once seemed unthinkable, and the players who wielded them with breathtaking power were rewarded like sheiks.
But all of those factors combined still didn't explain the quantum leap in home runs.
Where did players get all those muscles?
You had to look at the players to bridge that gap. They went along voluntarily because their bank accounts swelled even faster than their biceps. And plenty of them would be willing guinea pigs still, if not for the leaked testimony from the BALCO investigation, the threat of government intervention and the frenzied fan mob that has encircled the game like it was Dr. Frankenstein's castle.
Union boss Don Fehr, to his credit, finally threw up his hands and conceded defeat. Ever the contrarian, though, he couldn't resist claiming one last time that the joke of a drug-testing policy shoehorned into the 2002 agreement was good enough.
"The preliminary indications, although I cannot go into details, are that the testing program we had this year had some pretty significant, positive effects," Fehr said.
But he quickly added, "That doesn't mean, given the experience we had, that there can't be amendments that would be even better."
Selig and his crowd, meanwhile, have taken up the cause with the zeal of recovering drug addicts. Lately, they can't talk tough enough. That's not just a departure from the mumbling they did while the game was being supersized, it makes a mockery of their negotiating position just two years ago.
The commissioner claimed then he agreed to the watered-down drug policy because it was the only way to avoid shutting down the game. Of course, if management hadn't made cracking down on salaries their top -- some would say only -- priority, they would have real drug testing in place already.
Last spring, just before he turned up in Congress to ask for help pressuring the players union to modify the drug policy, Selig's office let it be known that he spent many a night rereading the "best interests of baseball" clause in the commissioner's handbook.
It was supposed to be a threat, but the owners who elevated him from within their ranks knew better. The "best interests of baseball" has always meant what's best for them at the moment.
XJim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org.