by Matt Barr

Bo knows

Keith Olbermann today makes a heartfelt argument that Major League Baseball and the Players Union, regardless of whether the fineries of the law are on their side or not, should honor their subpoenas to testify before the House Committee on Government Reform:

You do not have to be a lawyer or an ethicist to realize that the arguments against the subpoenas are ludicrous. They're based on the premise that to possibly reveal the names of players who have used steroids or human growth hormone, illegally, without doctors' prescriptions, would violate a confidentiality agreement between the owners and the players' union. This premise is akin to organized crime leaders seeking to stop congressional testimony because it promised that it would keep the names of its hit men secret.

But even if baseball had a legitimate argument, it shouldn't use it. All it will accomplish by this defiance is to take what is still a relatively back-burner issue among its customers, and give it the appearance of a total stonewall, a complete cover-up, a four-alarm fire of guilty conscience that could not be more damaging than if it proved all the players of the last 20 years had been injected with steroids personally by Bud Selig himself.

Baseball is launching its own version of Watergate. Not the break-in, but the cover-up.

Matt Welch takes a different approach: "It's an excellent time ... for baseball to tell Congress to get bent."

Most excellent! But that does ignore the public relations realities of the situation. I don' t like them, either, but they're there -- we can't ask a multibillion dollar enterprise to take one for civil liberties. It's not our money.

This caught my eye in Olbermann's post:

I spent more than 20 years as a sports reporter, most of them on the national level. I heard my first accusation of steroid use (ironically enough, against Jose Canseco), from another active player, in the winter of 1987. I had an eminent sports orthopedic surgeon tell me in 1991 that the sudden demise of the career of a seemingly invincible ballplayer due to a rare blood vessel problem could only have been caused by a long-standing hereditary issue that should have affected every male in his family for generations, or by the repeated injections of performance-enhancing drugs into a specific part of the body.

I asked over at Baseball Primer's Primer Dugout today whether anyone knew who Olbermann might mean. I got an e-mail from a gentleman I'll identify if he wants me to, but I won't assume, guessing Bo Jackson. Now, I don't want to ding anyone's good name, but Jackson is an attractive guess:

Sudden demise -- check. A two-sport star, on Jan. 13, 1991, Jackson "suffered a hip injury while being tackled during the Raiders' playoff victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. No one knew at the time, but the resulting condition, known as avascular necrosis, would lead to the deterioration of the cartilage and bone around his left hip joint."

1991 -- check. Jackson got hurt in January of that year, then was released by the Royals in March, and signed on with the White Sox, performing poorly as a result of his injury. He would undergo hip replacement surgery in April, 1992, struggle through another couple partial baseball seasons, and retire.

Seemingly invincible -- check.

Rare blood vessel problem: check:

Avascular necrosis is a disease resulting from the temporary or permanent loss of the blood supply to the bones. Without blood, the bone tissue dies and causes the bone to collapse. If the process involves the bones near a joint, it often leads to collapse of the joint surface. This disease also is known as osteonecrosis, aseptic necrosis, and ischemic bone necrosis.

Although it can happen in any bone, avascular necrosis most commonly affects the ends (epiphysis) of long bones such as the femur, the bone extending from the knee joint to the hip joint. Other common sites include the upper arm bone, knees, shoulders, and ankles. The disease may affect just one bone, more than one bone at the same time, or more than one bone at different times. Avascular necrosis usually affects people between 30 and 50 years of age; about 10,000 to 20,000 people develop avascular necrosis each year. Orthopaedic doctors most often diagnose the disease.

If this is who Olbermann is talking about -- clever, if so, since no one (demonstrably, judging by how long it took Primates to guess) immediately associates "rare blood vessel problem" with Bo Jackson instead of "hip replacement" -- it's a shame on one hand, because Jackson was an awfully exciting player to watch, in either sport. On the other hand, if it's true, we don't know how much of that was ability and how much was juice.

Note that I'm only speculating who Olbermann might be talking about; I have no information on which to base an opinion whether Bo Jackson took steroids, and whether they ended his career.

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