Coming clean: Bob Costas, one of the first to speak out about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, shares his latest views on the subject

Sporting News, The, June 10, 2005 by Ken Rosenthal

TSN: When did you first become aware of the steroid problem in baseball?

COSTAS: I saw some players going back to the late '80s who I thought were oddly reconstructed. Lenny Dykstra came to spring training one year looking like he'd been inflated with a bicycle pump. Jose Canseco seemed too big and too buff to be true. But it wasn't until the mid-'90s that I thought the game itself was beginning to be distorted.

TSN: Whom do you hold more responsible, the union or MLB?

COSTAS: I hold them equally responsible at the outset. From roughly 2000 on, I would hold the union primarily responsible. The owners and the commissioner got religion on this late, but they did. You can be cynical about their concerns, but they at least put it on the table in some way. ... I sincerely believe that if left entirely to their own devices, Donald Fehr and Gene Orza would never have considered this a significant problem in baseball and would never have initiated anything to correct it, whether for the integrity of the game or for the well-being and integrity of their own membership.

What's disappointing is that Fehr, a very intelligent man, couldn't see through the haze of ideology and adversarial history that surrounds all owner-player issues in baseball. ... He did a bad job for his own membership. He failed to protect the innocent. He enabled the cheaters who surged past them. He placed his own membership in the horrible position of making the choice between cheating to keep up and running the risk to their reputations and long-term health or staying clean and competing at a disadvantage. He also failed to protect the historical standing of past members of the union--to whom he may not have had a specific legal obligation but certainly had some moral obligation. What do you say to Mike Schmidt, to Reggie Jackson, to Hank Aaron?

TSN: If you could interview Barry Bonds, what would you ask him?

COSTAS: I would ask him to explain not how he sustained his Hall of Fame level of play through his late 30s--which is a remarkable enough achievement--but how he reached a level far, far beyond anything that his own career had ever suggested or that any player in baseball history, including Babe Ruth, had ever approached. How did that happen?

TSN: What was your opinion of Mark McGwire's testimony before Congress?

COSTAS: I was pained by it. Obviously he came off very badly. You'd have to be very naive not to think something went on at some point; otherwise, he'd have been more forthcoming. Still, the media tend to either glorify or vilify, and the truth is seldom that simple. Mark McGwire is basically a good man. He has many admirable qualities. He's charitable and kindhearted. As a player, he generally conducted himself with grace and humility, traits sorely lacking in sports and society. There's a reason why he was so well-liked by his teammates. There's a reason why Tony La Russa stands up for him.

TSN: Will the steroids issue ever go away?

COSTAS: Part of the appeal of baseball has always been the comparisons across the generations. If it turns out that the all-time and single-season home run marks are viewed as inauthentic, or if Hall of Fame candidates have bogus numbers, it will taint the whole ongoing discussion. So even if they somehow eliminate steroids from the game, they won't be able to put the entire scandal behind them because history is so essential to baseball and many believe that history has been poisoned.

A complete transcript of this interview is available at sportingnews.com. Costas 'new show, Costas Now, appears monthly on HBO.