Pushover.

That was quick.

Mike Lupica's righteous indignation quickly turned into rosy-cheeked optimism:

"In the process yesterday, the players really told their own leaders they were wrong about drugs in baseball, and that the time has finally come to make things right. This was a big agreement in one of those rooms that was about something even more important than money."

It's definitely not about money. It's definitely not damage control for a corporation (baseball) and its commodities (players).

"Money?" What's "money?"


"It resulted in a historic day, the players taking this sort of action in the middle of a CBA. It means the players have finally tired of a drug policy - one primarily shaped by Fehr and Orza - that not only protects the guilty, but allows the guilty to take the innocent right down with them. Maybe they have finally realized that the health of their players, the integrity of the game and its records, is something more than a bargaining chip, like luxury taxes and revenue sharing.

Or maybe the players did finally realize Fehr and Orza work for them, not the other way around."

Maybe so, maybe not. Mark me down on the "maybe not" side.


"The time for posturing is over, and publicity stunts. Baseball has always gotten this wrong, until now. The players finally figured that out yesterday. Everybody comes to New York next week to start making things right. Giambi may end up a baseball hero after all."

This whole thing is a publicity stunt.


"We were all seduced by the home-run summer of 1998, when baseball picked itself off the mat once and for all, came all the way back from the strike of 1994."

At least Lupica sort of admits that he was wrong in 1998. But don't include me in that "all." I thought the entire Great HR Race of '98 was farcical. I didn't write a freakin' book about it.

Not that I have ever been particularly outraged about steroid use -- in 1998 or in 2004 -- I am just amused that a journalist who thinks he's such a keen observer of the sports world couldn't tell that the emperor was wearing no clothes.


What exactly happened yesterday? Nothin'. Sorry, folks, but nothin' happened at all. A bunch of words that probably will have little action behind them. It's just more proof that the solution to these kinds of P.R. crises is to appear to do something rather than actually doing something.

The players show some contrition when they finally, officially get caught. They promise to get tough and Mike Lupica buys it hook, line, and sinker. Maybe in retrospect it's not so surprising that Sherlock Holmes over here never noticed the peculiar expansion of Mark McGwire's biceps, the sudden minotaur-like appearance of Sammy Sosa's face.