Posted by David Wade on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 2:58 pm

When I started to look back on 2009 in Major League Baseball the past few days, one topic kept bullying its way to the forefront of my memory.  Steroid use among players.  There were other themes, to be sure.  Some things that may be more important and some that may be more fun to think about.  Sadly, as much as I wanted to come up with some entertaining and hilarious look back on the season that many of you would want to print out and distribute to every person you know, what I kept remembering most in regards to drama and significance revolved around steroids.

Yes, the Yankees signed arguably the three best free agents heading into 2009 and their resulting title run was a significant story-especially given the franchise’s history.  Combine that with the subsequently rekindled debate over baseball’s competitive balance given certain teams’ financial advantages in an open market, and the Yankees held sway over 2009.  There were even other stories, as well.

Like Albert Pujols’ continued efforts to prove himself one of the best hitters in baseball history,  Joe Mauer’s emergence as a superstar,  outstanding individual pitching seasons in both leagues, horrible umpiring, or the Phillies making consecutive Series appearances. 

All of those story lines helped shape the 2009 season, and they all might be better to reminisce about than steroids.  Unfortunately, MLB players are nowhere near as effective at hiding their PED use as players in nearly every other sport are.  Therefore, they are more likely to be caught and more likely to dominate my memory of professional baseball in 2009.

It started back in February, with pitchers and catchers reporting to their respective camps to start conditioning.  However, the biggest news did not involve any of the battery mates in Arizona and Florida.  No, the biggest news once again revolved around Alex Rodriguez’s name allegedly being one of the 104 that tested positive in 2003 during MLB’s infamous anonymous survey of PED use in their sport.  Barry Bonds’ name was allegedly on the list as well, but since no one in the world was surprised and he wasn’t an active player, it didn’t really resonate.  A-Rod would face a full media assault.

Primobolan and elevated testosterone.  That’s what his sample showed.  Two days after the story broke, Rodriguez admitted to sampling ‘boli’ during his Texas Ranger years, but described that era as a ‘loosey-goosey’ time and that he didn’t really know what he was doing.  His cousin supposedly bought the stuff over the counter in the Dominican (sounds plausible) and A-Rod would take a shot or two every month (sounds a little too low to believe, dosage-wise).  A-Rod had denied PED use in televised interviews before 2009 and probably never fully admitted to the extent of his use once caught.  However, he came forward more so than most who’d been accused in the past, which just means he at least addressed it in some manner. 

The public and media heaped criticism on Rodriguez during the month of February.  In March, things didn’t get any better for him.  With exhibition games in full swing, Rodriguez’s hip started to bother him more and more.  After weighing his options, Rodriguez again made news by choosing an arthroscopic procedure that would cause him to miss the first month or so of the season.  With the bad news getting worse, the Yankees said that he’d likely need an even more invasive surgery at season’s end to completely repair his hip.  Rodriguez’s clean-up surgery was a success and he came back quicker than most guessed he would.

Just before Rodriguez recovered enough to make his way back to the field in May, MLB suspended Manny Ramirez 50 games for breaking their PED policy.  Manny’s Dodgers were off to a hot start and he had picked up where he left off in 2008 as far as production. 

Ramirez had tested positive for elevated testosterone, later found to be from a synthetic source.  MLB testing rules allow access to players’ medical records when results such as those come up.  Ramirez’s records showed a prescription for hCG, which is on MLB’s list of banned drugs- whether it’s prescribed or not.  hCG is a female fertility drug that steroid users will often use during a cycle to minimize the minimization of their testicles, which is an understandably undesired side-effect of steroid cycles.  Drugs like these are banned because the only reason a healthy male would ever take them would be because they were cycling steroids and wanting to limit testicular atrophy. 

The combination of elevated testosterone and the hCG prescription made MLB’s suspension of Ramirez, and his acceptance of it without appeal, easy decisions.  Manny gave a statement in which he apologized and said a doctor prescribed the medicine and that he didn’t realize it fell under MLB’s umbrella of banned substances.  He was less forthcoming than A-Rod, his story sounds like a cop-out, and last we heard Manny’s doctor is under investigation.

About a month later, a blogger suggested that maybe Raul Ibanez’s spectacular first half of the season could be attributed to PED use.  The author concluded in his article that no, that was not likely the cause- citing park factors, better protection in the lineup, etc.  But, just the mention of the “S” word was enough to get the Philadelphia media riled up, which got Ibanez riled up, which got anti-bloggers riled up.

Ibanez came back down to earth in the second half of the season and ended up performing for the year at just about the same level he always has.  His first half of the season may have been an eyebrow-raising outlier, but by the end of the season he had posted career highs in a few categories, but nothing so absurd as to be damning evidence of PED use.

Around the time Ibanez responded harshly to the on-line article, sources named former Cub Sammy Sosa as another player on the list of 2003 positive tests.  Sosa is in the Dominican, retired from baseball, and has not commented on the results.  A side-note from that story revolved around Angel Presinal, a big-time trainer in Dominican baseball circles.  Presinal’s other notable clients include Alex Rodriguez and the former has come under scrutiny himself. 

About a month later, at the end of July, ‘lawyers with knowledge of the results’ leaked David Ortiz’s name as yet another of those positive tests from 2003.  Ortiz no-commented at first, but then met with reporters, apologized, and said he couldn’t be sure what happened but intended to find out what he tested positive for.  His defense is that he has taken supplements in the past and though he never meant to, he must have taken something that contained steroids. 

As usual, pennant races and playoffs did a lot to wash the stain of steroids from the game of baseball, simply because baseball is compelling and the game tends to have the ability to make you forget about nastiness outside the base paths.  News on the PED front calmed considerably in the latter part of the season, but unfortunately there was enough to make 2009 yet another in recent memory dominated by MLB’s struggle to deal with PED use amongst its players. 

Hopefully 2010 will be different.