THE WATERCOOLER

QUESTION: With the New York Times reporting that Sammy Sosa’s name is on the list of 104 players who tested positive in 2003 for using a performance-enhancing drug, the question becomes: When will it end? If and when the entire list is released, do you believe baseball will finally start to cleanse itself of the stain brought on by PEDs or will the topic continue to rear its head for years to come?

RICK HUMMEL
This will be a topic for as long as baseball is played. Not that baseball can’t learn a lesson from this, but what we have here is an era — and baseball is nothing but a collection of eras.

JEFF GORDON
Even releasing the whole list wouldn’t shed complete light on the situation. By now, we know that PED abuse was rampant. The Commissioner looked the other way, owners looked the other way and so did general managers and managers. We know now not to be surprised by any name that emerges in this ongoing story. What happened happened. All baseball can do is remain vigilant, improve its testing program on the fly and nab some additional big-name cheats to discourage wholesale abuse. The players association could help by aggressively educating its members on this issue and former abusers could help by stepping up to discuss the matter.

GERRY FRALEY
Major League Baseball faces a true dilemma here. Release the list, and MLB sets back what has been an improving relationship with the Major League Baseball Players Association. Test results were to be kept secret, but the players for generations have never trusted the owners to keep their word. Players had nothing to gain from leaking names, but ownership did. Hold back the list, and everyone in the game during the 2003 season falls under suspicion, keeping the issue alive. Better to do that than publish the names.

In moving forward, it is more important to keep a good working relationship between management and the players’ union than it is to revisit the past. Baseball has not had a work stoppage since 1994-95, but that could change if distrust and suspicion return as the sides get ready to work on a new basic agreement. The current deal expires in December, 2011.

Most in the industry believe only a handful of players still in the game would be on a list of those who tested positive.

TOM TIMMERMANN
If names keep trickling out, this topic will keep popping up, though at some point, all the famous names will be out and the remaining players will be people most fans don’t care about. The stain won’t go away for a long time. Even those who never failed a drug test will be suspect because they played at the same time. They may have just been lucky not to have been caught. And as the Olympics show, even having tight drug testing doesn’t mean people will stop using drugs. They’ll just use different drugs and hope to be one step ahead of the law. I don’t think baseball will ever by free of the stain of performance enhancing drugs. You’re looking at a 20-year swath of baseball history where the records set can’t be trusted, and everyone else will play under a cloud. But baseball fans also have shown that, at a certain level, they don’t care about steroids and keep rooting for the home team. Baseball has shown itself to be pretty hard to kill.