It's too late now to make a difference

As much as baseball players like to spit, you'd think their whistles would be perpetually wet.

That's why if you came in during the middle of Sunday's "60 Minutes," you had to think it was a piece on steroids in baseball.

"Yes," the segment subject said when asked whether he had a financial motive to expose a cheater.

It was as simple as that: Somebody was using dirty tactics to beat him so he informed the authorities.

"He was a competitor of mine in 2000 to 2004," the interviewee added. "And when someone's competing on your playing field who's a dirty player, you want him tossed off the field."

A Red Sox player talking about Andy Pettitte? An Angel talking about Alex Rodriguez when A-Rod was with the Rangers? A Dodger talking about bitter rival Barry Bonds?

No, unfortunately for baseball it was none of the above. Players didn't have the guts to tell on fellow union members.

The person on "60 Minutes" who couldn't bear to compete against a cheater was Harry Markopolos, who in 2000 started alerting the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernie Madoff was a Ponzi schemer.

Apparently the SEC wasn't any more interested in nabbing Madoff than MLB was in nabbing steroid users.

Markopolos had to keep going back to the authorities with more information - in 2001, in 2005, again and again - until Madoff finally fell.

By then it was too late, of course. Scores of investors lost billions of dollars that'll never be recovered. Just as it was too late to recover baseball's credibility by the time the government forced drug testing.

By then everyone on every level of the major leagues was suspected of cheating, negligence or both.

Baseball was besmirched in part because the clean guys weren't ethical enough to step up and say out loud that the dirty guys were unethical.

Not long ago a woman named Dana Jill Simpson blew the whistle on political corruption in Alabama. Decades ago a New York City cop named Frank Serpico blew the whistle on police corruption.

They and Markopolos were common folk who demonstrated uncommon valor.

They certainly weren't major-league players strong enough to stand in the batter's box against 100-mph fastballs or to snag line drives driven back to the mound.

Yet those big, strong athletes didn't have the intestinal fortitude to approach the authorities with suspicions that something was wrong.

Much less, you know, to go back time after time, as Markopolos had to do until someone finally did something.

So now it's hollow when Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt accuses Rodriguez of taking money from him and Jamie Moyer says former teammate A-Rod doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame.

Where were you when it mattered, fellas? OK, I know, you were chatting with reporters who also were negligent during the Steroid Era.

Anyway, Al Pacino played Serpico in a feature film. He once asked Serpico why he became a whistle-blower.

The answer: "I guess I would have to say it would be because - if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?"

Now the entire game of baseball is facing the music because no one whetted his whistle during the Steroid Era.

mimrem@dailyherald.com