The Skinny: A big yawn for steroid probe, By: David Vantress

April 5, 2006, Star-Times Sports Editor

My grandpa, who passed away recently, had a number of sayings he was fond of.

One of them was, "Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win."

Grandpa wasn't a baseball fan - but if he was, I know he wouldn't find much to cheer about these days.

Major League Baseball last week decided to open a full-fledged investigation into the steroid problem.

Uh, okay.

Memo to Commissioner Bud Selig: Nice try. But the henhouse door has been left open so long on this one, the fox is probably sunning himself on the French Riviera somewhere.

Years later, millions of dollars short. Thanks for nothing, Bud.

That said, it's better late than never, I guess.

I don't think a respected guy like George Mitchell would sign onto something that he felt was going to be a whitewash.

So Bud Lite's choice of Mitchell is encouraging to me.

But to be honest - I'm not sure baseball didn't cross the Rubicon on this particular issue a long time ago.

There are a lot of disillusioned fans out there ... If it isn't high-priced crybaby players or greedy owners, it's this.

Of course, baseball has always had a shady side. No denying that - whether it was the Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series, or drinking and what they used to call "carousing," or the racist antics of Ty Cobb.

Or, worse, the racist antics of the sport in general, keeping African-Americans out until 1947.

But this just seems worse ... and I'm afraid that we haven't even seen the whole iceberg yet. Just the little piece that sticks out of the water.

I read reams of baseball statistics every year - most of those in my other incarnation as a team owner.

A fantasy team owner, that is.

And now when I look at a stat, I just wonder: Is that guy on the juice?

I think back to my high school days, sitting in the locker room.

There was a guy on the team who had access to what I now, with the wisdom of approaching middle age, believe to be steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

I'd put on my gear in silence and listen to him hawk his wares to the other guys on the team.

"Take this, it'll give you a little extra burst of energy when you need it," he'd say.

Or, "Take this. Everyone's doing it. We're just trying to level the playing field."

Or, "Take this. It'll make you heal quicker if you get hurt."

One day as I listened to this, I found myself getting angrier and angrier - because I knew that some of my teammates were cheating.

One time, I asked one of them about it ... His response was, "Hey, if you're not cheating, you're not trying. It's only cheating if you get caught."

I was never offered any of that stuff.

To be honest with you, I'm not sure it would have helped much anyway.

Maybe it would have just boosted me to the ranks of the average.

Perhaps that's why I didn't make the client list.

Or maybe it was because the locker-room steroid salesman sensed that I'd go right to the coaches and blow the whistle on his little burgeoning enterprise.

I actually almost did that, anyway. One day after listening to this Donald Trump wannabe make three or four sales before practice, I walked by the coach's office and stuck my head in the door.

"Something on your mind, David?" the coach asked as he looked over from the projector screen.

But I got cold feet. I slogged through some bogus question I made up on the spot about something I'd seen our opponent do on the game film we reviewed in practice that week.

And I never did report what I was hearing.

Some days, I wish I had.

That guy, by the way ... the locker room pusher ... died of a heart attack just short of his 30th birthday.

I always kind of had a feeling something like that was going to  happen - not that I was wishing for it, but just because I sensed it.

Drugs are bad news - no matter what package they come in.

I hope the steroid investigation goes somewhere - but I'm a bit of a pessimist on this.

I'm not sure baseball is willing to take the bitter medicine that it's going to have to swallow to deal with this issue once and for all. That would include banning people from baseball and erasing records from the record book.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, however.

It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last.