ESPN to examine steroid 'enablers' in MLB

Photo credit: Watchdog

ESPN deserves props for being all over the ongoing steroid saga - to the extent fans care anymore.

Among other things, it has been buying up some of the top steroid experts in print journalism, including T.J. Quinn.

Sunday Quinn will head a report on "Outside the Lines" focusing on the "enablers" of the steroid era, which, of course, means pretty much all of us, including ESPN.

Click below for the entire news release on this show.

(I know, I know. We should just make them pay for an ad or something, but I offer this stuff as a service to you, the reader.)Sunday’s Outside the Lines will include an in-depth story by ESPN investigative reporter T.J. Quinn of ESPN’s Enterprise Unit examining the enablers of Major League Baseball’s “steroid era.”

“The Mitchell report exposed a culture of loyalty and secrecy that was practically an incubator for performance-enhancing drugs,” says Quinn, who, before joining ESPN in November 2007, broke numerous stories about doping involving BALCO, the George Mitchell investigation, and the Signature Pharmacy investigation in Albany, N.Y. as part of the New York Daily News' sports investigative team.

Among those interviewed are former Orioles and Mets GM Jim Duquette, who says he would sit with other Mets executives in the late 1990s and guess which opposing players were using steroids, and longtime Atlanta Brave and two-time MVP Dale Murphy who says he laments not reaching out to steroid users while he was a player.

Additionally, Larry Starr, who spent 30 years as the head trainer for the Florida Marlins and Cincinnati Reds, tells Quinn of seeing a light-hitting double-A prospect in 1984 hit .400 and smash several home runs in spring training after he, “went from like 169 pounds to 195 pounds, and the interesting thing about that is all the weight he gained was almost all muscle.”

Excerpts from the show:

“Whoever first started proposing this testing was right. We missed the boat and we should have acknowledged that and agreed to that.” – Dale Murphy, former Atlanta Braves outfielder

T.J. Quinn: “Was there anybody who ever said ‘This is just wrong,’ morally, ethically? Did anyone ever make that argument?”

Jim Duquette: “No. No. Never did I have anybody within our organization, and I don’t recall any conversation outside the organization with any club executive that said, ‘This is wrong.’”

“(The Commissioner’s office was) ‘We agree. We need to do testing, but the Players Association won’t let us.’ (The Players Association would say) ‘We agree. Most of my members would say testing would be fine, but we don’t trust the owners.”– Larry Starr, former MLB team trainer, on meeting of the MLB medical staff in 1990 during which numerous team doctors began to sound the alarm that steroids had started to invade the game and that testing was needed

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