OK, so the clubs are under no OBLIGATION to turn over the list, but since laws were or may have been broken, are they not exempted from maintaining anonymity in the case that they turn the list over to law enforcement?  And if the contract stipulates that the list NOT be made available to law enforcement, doesn’t that constitute conspiracy?

No, Richard, they’re not. For one thing, not all PED-positive tests represent illegality. There are banned substances that aren’t illegal. More commonly, there are players who took drugs legally in the Dominican Republic or somewhere and then came here and tested positive.  So the assumption that there was illegality here is a false one.

More generally, under your construction, any drug counselor would be obligated to report his patients to the police.

More generally than that, the police really, really don’t care about past drug use. They investigate possession, distribution, etc., but if you go to a police station and tell them that your neighbor smoked pot last week, they’re not exactly going to get off their butts and start building a case against him.

Why aren’t you talking about Irabu more…lol?  Anyway, I think he actually threw higher than 93.  Let’s not forget, he was the two-time pitcher of the month in the AL…which isn’t much to hang your hat on but it does indicate there were brief stretches where he was an effective pitcher.

@ Jack - The list is a means to humiliate the cheaters, and convert them into pariahs that may never see the HOF unless they buy a ticket.  It’s not so much that I want to inflict unpleasantness on the offenders, but to instill the fear of unpleasantness into anyone that even THINKS about using in the future.  The embarassment, the loss of fan support, and the potential loss of future income would, I think, be enough of a deterrant to keep the guys on the straight and narrow…

RiD: 1) I don’t think the list is a fair or effective way of doing that. The players who took tainted supplements in 2003, the experimenters and the full-scale, all in, long term juicers are not the same, and don’t deserve the same fate. 2) What’s special about 2003? If we’re going to accept the “why just the leaked names?” logic, how is it fair to make the 2003 list the official black list (along with the Mitchell Report), when we know it doesn’t cover before or after, or even during? 3) The Hall of Fame is a pretty strange mode of punishment, since the vast majority of players won’t get in anyway.I’m sure Barry and Roger and many others will say, “I’ll take the glory, the money and the stats, thanks: getting left out of the club is a pretty cheap price to pay.”
The only thing releasing the list would deter is trusting the Players Union. I guess that’s something…

Richard: PLEASE stop using “witch hunt” this way.

There were no witches. It was a hunt for a non-existent sin, and hence 100% cruel and unjust. There were and are PED abusers. Those who used steroids in contravention of the rules, sportsmanship and U.S. law richly deserve to be discovered, shamed and punished. Maybe it’s difficult or impossible to do it, but finding out who cheated (or who didn’t) is a legitimate objective, and while I feel sorry for those who burned in Salem (actually they were mostly hung, but bear with me here…)I have zero sympathy for A-Rod, Sammy and Ortiz as they get flamed by disillusioned fans and indignant sportswriters. They were real, live cheaters.

The existence of witches was a fantasy.

The analogy with the requirement of confession for absolution in the witch trials is somewhat better, except that 1) the confessions to witchcraft were false 2) they were obtained under torture and 3) those who confessed were killed anyway.

I take it back: it’s a lousy metaphor, period.

Richard: that’s disingenuous. The use of the term “witch hunt”  always includes the implication that those being hunter are victims and those doing the hunting are fanatics. The creator of the false use of witch hunt, playwright Arthur Miller, was always sympathetic with the Communists in the creative community, and was willing to give a pass to the Communists in the government to paint HUAC and McCarthy targets as heroes and good guys—-and they weren’t all heroes and good guys—-so there was a clear black and white dichotomy. You continue this deceit with your supposed equivalencies:  Abigail Hobbs FALSELY accused people of being witches. Elia Kazan did not falsely accuse anyone—-he acknowledged that individuals already on record as being in the Communist Party were. Abigail Hobbs is a villain. Grimsley and Kazan were men placed in ethical dilemmas. I don’t care that “witch hunt” is commonly used—-it’s commonly used deceptively or ignorantly, and you aren’t ignorant. Because people think of witch hunts as hysteria over non-existent crimes that victimize innocent people, when you apply the term to something like baseball’ steroid problems, it is misleading.

Unless your deep understanding of the Salem trials includes inside knowledge that people were really being turned into newts, it’s a careless and in some cases, intentionally muddling analogy.

The Bakersfield child molestation case in the Eighties is one example of “witch hunt” being used correctly.

Jack:

In your rush to a perhaps overly literal definition of “witch hunt”, you’re missing the larger part of my point, namely, the approach of the “hunters” and the response of the community to those who made tactically wise confessions.

And the last time I checked, Jason Grimsley Grimsley is one of those who “...used steroids in contravention of the rules, sportsmanship and U.S. law richly deserve to be discovered, shamed and punished.” Sounds pretty villainous to me.

@ Richard - This is NOT a witch hunt!  A witch hunt, simply put, tries to punish people who either didn’t do a crime, or DID do something that some zealots percieve as doing some harm to someone or something.  The fact is, the players that used PED’s DID do harm on many different levels: 1) the integrity of the game and its records 2) the other players who either didn’t do it and lost income because they ended up further down the scale than they would have been, or did do them and therefore did harm to themselves 3)  the fans who were cheated out of a true test of the teams’ abilities 4) the owners (yes, the owners), who were not getting what they thought they were paying for.  If there is actual harm being done, then what is being sought is PROSECUTION, not persecution…