Michael Ventre

Baseball just nabbed Rafael Palmeiro. Can you imagine how many other buffed stars it could have netted if it had had a steroids policy with some teeth the past several years?

Obviously, that’s why it didn’t have a policy like that.

When it was announced Monday that Palmeiro would be doing a performance-enhanced perp walk, it illustrated that the post-BALCO guidelines indeed are working. If the revamped policy can shock the baseball community by snaring a guy who just crested the 3,000-hit mark to go with his 569 home runs, it sends a sharp warning to others toying with the idea of jabbing a needle into their gluteus maximus.

But it also holds up a mirror to both Major League Baseball and its Players Association and exposes them for their years of intentional neglect. Neither the commissioner’s office nor the union ever wanted its greatest stars to be embarrassed, or the game to be soiled. So their lamebrained solution was to ignore the problem and deny it existed.

This latest development — nailing a probable future Hall of Famer right around the time that the debate over his credentials for Cooperstown was at its peak — shows how the current caretakers of the game should also be penalized for gross dereliction of duty.

Union head Donald Fehr always had fiercely protected the privacy rights of his players. Usually, that’s an admirable stance, within reason. But even the most trusting fan began to smell a rat when people such as Brady Anderson and Bret Boone started hitting like The Whammer from “The Natural,” and when Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds suddenly put the family of Roger Maris on high alert.

Instead of recognizing what was going on, having some foresight and realizing that exposure of steroids use and an ensuing scandal were inevitable, Fehr and his cohorts clung to their selfish position. They did so because many juicers in the union’s ranks were enjoying fatter paydays than they could have ever dreamed of, and because money equals influence, the players’ association tended to side with the heavy earners and tune out the complaints of the little fish who wanted to clean up the game.

THE PALMEIRO STEROID SCANDAL      Robinson wants to ‘wipe out’ Raffy’s stats Celizic's blog: Bud, you're late to the party Interactive: Is Palmeiro a Hall of Famer? Interactive: Who's Who of steroid crisis

Those around commissioner Bud Selig believed that when more baseballs go over the fence, more fans fill the seats. So Selig snored while steroids raged.

They all look like losers today, because Palmeiro stands in disgrace.

Maybe baseball and its union are guilty simply of being too gullible. After all, Palmeiro said to Congress back in March: “I have never used steroids. Period. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.”

In a prepared statement Monday, he reiterated those sentiments, although when you read this I think it would help if you imagined Palmeiro with a big red nose: “I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period. Ultimately, although I never intentionally put a banned substance into my body, the independent arbitrator ruled that I had to be suspended under the terms of the program.”