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Schadenfreude

Sometimes, I don't know how to feel. And this is one of those times.

As you either have heard or should have heard by now, you lazy know-nothing ingrate, a court of appeals recently ruled that...well, to be on the safe side, let's just quote the story:

With Barry Bonds still in their sights, federal investigators probing steroids in sports can now use the names and urine samples of about 100 Major League Baseball players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, following a ruling Wednesday from a federal appeals court.

The 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned three lower court decisions and could help authorities pinpoint the source of steroids in baseball.

I don't know about this. If you don't remember, the first year of steroid testing was supposed to, according to reports at the time, be completely confidential-intended more as a survey to see how prevalent steroid use was in baseball before real testing-and punishment-began.

Obviously, that's not how it played out. Someone was keeping track of who took what test, otherwise the feds wouldn't waste their time trying to get the records.

To be honest, I just don't know enough about the case. It could be the union lawyers who were responsible for the negotiations made some mistake and inadvertently allowed Major League Baseball to keep all the information. Then MLB, since it has surrendered all semblance of leverage to the players' union, then let the feds do what they do best-clean up baseball's messes so they don't have to. But what it looks like right now is that players could end up being punished for tests they took-testing they only agreed to because they thought it would be anonymous. And if that's really all it is, I don't like the precedent this sets.

On the other hand, while my general distaste for unions has cooled over the years, my absolute hatred for the MLBPA knows nearly no limits. It'd be great to see them screwed over for ignoring players' health and delaying beyond any reasonable expectation the implementation of steroid testing.

What do y'all think? More specifically, Cap'n, would you like to explain this all to us?

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