MLB was Warned About 'roids

Major League Baseball, and Bud Selig in particular, would have you think that the powers that be knew nothing about performance enhancing steroids until 1999 or 2000. Larry Starr, a former trainer for the Marlins and Reds, says otherwise.

"Here's the thing that really bothers me," Starr said in a recent interview with Florida Today. "They sit there, meaning the commissioner's office, Bud Selig and that group, and the players' association, Don Fehr and that group . . . they sit there and say, 'Well, now that we know that this happened we're going to do something about it."

"I have notes from the Winter Meetings where the owners group and the players' association sat in meetings with the team physicians and team trainers. I was there. And team physicians stood up and said, 'Look, we need to do something about this. We've got a problem here if we don't do something about it.' That was in 1988."

Starr was interviewed on 4 separate occasions by George Mitchell's panel investigating steroid use. Starr has said that members of that 1997 Marlins team used steroids. And in case you are wondering, yes, Gary Sheffield was on that squad.

Starr did not name names, but feels steroid use has been rampant.

"By high percentage, meaning 30 to 40 percent of the team might have been using," Starr said. "(But) some teams had maybe only one or two."

Starr remembers one player who ended the season in 1989 weighing 171 pounds. In the spring, the same player reported to camp weighing 205, and his body fat had actually dropped from eight percent to 5.8. That was one of the moments that frightened him the most -- a player who was obviously loaded with performance enhancers to a dangerous point.

Now we'll see where Mitchell's investigation and MLB goes from here. It's time to admit this is much bigger than Barry Bonds or at least Barry Bonds' head.

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