In the aftermath of two more big names being leaked from the ’03 steroids list, you knew the Players Union wouldn’t just sit back silently without comment, right? Well, the snake that is Donald Fehr spoke up as you could imagine and is doing everything possible to take the focus away from Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz who cheated the game by using performance-enhancers and put it on the people leaking the sealed grand jury info:
But there should be no mistake. The leaking of information under a court seal is a crime. The active pursuit of information that may not lawfully be disclosed because it is under court seal is a crime. That its informants, according to the Times, are lawyers is both shocking and sad. That the Times is pursuing and publishing what it openly declares to be information which may not be legally disclosed is equally sad. We intend to take the appropriate legal steps to see that the court orders are enforced.”
Leave it up to the Players Union, the biggest culprit in this whole scandal, to ignore the most glaring problem — its players are using illegal drugs (yes, anabolic steroids are illegal in the country) and cheating the game. They are the ones chiefly responsible for the problem, and if the players never had taken the stuff there wouldn’t be an issue of sealed information. Let’s all remember here that this is the same country where lawyers’ responsibilities are to the defendant, even if the defendant has confessed murder to them. Ignore all the spin and get down to the real problem — the players were the ones doing the illegal activity to begin with and it’s the union that shepherded the whole thing. If each leak puts more pressure on the union to accept harsher penalties for users, then I’m all for it. Two years for a first-time offense, lifetime ban after that.
