Oh yeah. The steroids scandal is the gift that keeps on giving -- column inches to fill, empty rants to vent, dogpiles to mount whenever another leak or allegation comes out. The media loooooves harping on the steroids scandal.
It's like the last two lines of "Blame Canada":
"We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming uuussss!"
The media -- and they know this -- utterly, completely, disastrously, MISSED the steroids scandal in real time. They're in the locker rooms, they see the physiques, they pick up some buzz, and there was nary a peep. I vaguely recall that Verducci and Nightengale included the occasional hint in a column here or there, and there was some ridiculous shock 'n awe when it was disclosed that McGwire was using androstenedione (which was both legal and not prohibited by MLB at the time; and when he STOPPED using it before the 1999 season, when he hit 65 HR, well, that was no story at all). (Note, "andro" is a steroidal precursor but NOT a steroid; it is, nevertheless, now banned. Which is fine.)
But that was it. Collective and willful ignorance bestows plausible deniability. We have to accept that the entire media was either massively witless (possible) or was indirectly complicit, willing to close one eye and look the other way pretty much all of the time (probable). Neither one is proud, but "witless" is actually preferable by the media.
Everyone in the print news business knows names like "Woodward", "Bernstein", and "Pulitzer", and the steroids scandal was such low-hanging fruit it was dragging on the ground, and EVERYONE missed it. Far too busy making hay out of home run races and so forth. Heck, those were easier, and player-friendlier, stories to write.
And they don't want anyone to blink and notice that.
So, Blame Canada. As it were.
