No Surprise, List Lacks Los Mets

{This article was originally published on Hot Stove New York.}

More than 80 current and former Major League players are cited as alleged users of performance-enhancing drugs in Senator George Mitchell’s report on steroid use in baseball. The investigation’s key witnesses include Brian McNamee, a former Yankee strength trainer, and Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant. Both men cooperated with the probe under pressure from the federal government, and as a result of their New York ties, the information they provided reflects particularly poorly on both New York franchises.

For the Yankees, current Yankees Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi have been tainted by the report’s findings, as well as former Yanks Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, Mike Stanton, Chuck Knoblauch, Kevin Brown, Denny Neagle, Jason Grimsley, Ron Villone and David Justice. For the Mets, while the team’s current roster has largely escaped untarnished, the recently departed Paul Lo Duca is a featured case study in the report, while former Mets Todd Hundley, Todd Pratt, Mo Vaughn, David Segui, Matt Franco, and Lenny Dykstra figure prominently as well.

While the players listed above represent quite an eclectic group of stars and scrubs, you may have noticed that what they don’t represent is a whole lot of diversity. Amidst a sea of familiar faces, the faces of Miguel Tejada, Jose Guillen, Benito Santiago, and Fernando Vina stand out. They are part of only a small handful of Latino players that appear on Senator Mitchell’s list of cheats, and comprise approximately 5 percent of the athletes exposed today (depending on the list you’re consulting), despite the fact that as of 2005 nearly 30 percent of Major League players were Latino.

Does this mean that Americans are more inclined to juice than their Southern neighbors? Of course not. In fact, there are indications that just the opposite may be true given the density of Latino surnames that have popped up in drug violations since the instatement of MLB’s stringent testing policy in 2005. Just as we can logically conclude that the NY-centric clientele of Radomski and McNamee is not an accurate representation of an affliction that clearly spans coast-to-coast, likewise the niche that these petty peddlers had carved for themselves is surely not the beginning and end of baseball’s illegal drug trade.

The fact of the matter is that if a Latino player is interested in using steroids, there is little reason for that player to seek those substances in the United States when it is readily available in his native country at half the cost and without the paper trail. Pharmaceutical regulations are looser in places such as Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Various steroids can be purchased over-the-counter and substances banned in the U.S. are frequently ingredients in legal supplements sold in Latin America.

In fact, in May 2007 Red Sox slugger David Ortiz notably told the Boston Herald that he has no way of knowing whether or not he unwittingly ingested a banned substance in his youth since he used to regularly buy protein shakes in the D.R. with little to no regard for the ingredients. Now Ortiz says he doesn’t even dare visit a GNC back home for fear of what he could be purchasing.

“I tell you, I don’t know too much about steroids, but I started listening about steroids when they started to bring that sh*t up,” Ortiz told the Herald. “I started realizing and getting to know a little bit about it. You’ve got to be careful.”

So while it comes as some surprise that so many members of the ‘99-2000 Yankees made the Senator’s list, it should surprise no one that the most notable Met name attached to the scandal is that of the recently jettisoned Lo Duca. I mean, who were you expecting? Ramon Castro? Carlos Delgado? Ambiorix Burgos? Surely not. With a roster that is a whopping 54% Latino as it stands today, the pickings were slim.

Given what we know, it is a virtual certainty that we will never see any sort of comprehensive list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. However, in the instance of the Mets, it was better to be lucky than good.