Blame Orza

No absolution on ARod, but if anyone's looking for someone to be pissed at (besides ARod), look no further than Gene Orza:

That list would have been long gone if not for the union; according to three baseball sources familiar with the testing process, players union COO Gene Orza worked long and hard to try to pare down the list. Orza's mission, SI's sources say, was to find enough false positives on the list to drive the number of failures so far down that real testing wouldn't be needed in 2004 or ever.

Orza wanted to get the list down below the five percent threshold for testing to go away entirely. But after months of trying, Orza couldn't do it, and baseball announced that a curiously imprecise 5-7 percent of players failed the 2003 survey test, enough to ramp up the testing in 2004, much to the union's dismay.

And when BALCO investigators asked for the results of the players linked to that scandal, Orza did what came naturally to him, which was to fight.

He had a history of winning his fights, so that gave him confidence that he could win this fight.

But this time he didn't win. The feds subpoenaed all the records instead of just the BALCO boys.

All 104 players who tested positive were now at risk.

"He wouldn't give up the BALCO names,'' one source said of Orza, "so instead, [the federal government] got every name.''

Tried to suppress the guilty names. Failed. Tried to prevent BALCO investigators from getting the 10 names they wanted. Failed. All 104 names released to Feds. Fast forward to today. EPIC FAIL. Thanks Gene.

Wonder what Marvin Miller is saying now. Betchya he's saying something like: "See, I told you numbskulls you shouldn't have caved in and let Bud & Co. have their way. You got burned."