How is it that a story about a former Red Sox player, who says that the team had a doctor come in during spring training and tell them that if they cycled steroids in the off-season it would help them train better than a clean player and would not hurt them unless they abused steroids, does not end up as a main front-page story on espn?  On May 10th former Red Sox player Lou Merloni went on a Comcast sports show and basically said that the Red Sox had sort of a “sex education” class on steroids, not promoting them but essentially saying if you don’t abuse them they can help you.  MLB.com had the story, so did Boston.com, so did some other newspaper blogs.  But I didn’t recall seeing this anywhere on ESPN.com, and I read ESPN.com every day, including Buster Olney’s excellent blog that tracks nearly everything everywhere about baseball.  So I did a google search and the only espn reference I found was this little tidbit tacked on to the end of a blog entry by Boston Red Sox Minster of Information, Peter Gammons:

Former big league infielder Lou Merloni caused a stir when he mentioned on a Comcast show in Boston that in 2001 a doctor addressed the Red Sox in spring training and suggested that if taken correctly, steroids could be helpful. Merloni has been hammered publicly, and then-GM Dan Duquette denied it. But a former major leaguer who was in camp that spring training corroborated Merloni’s story and says: “I’m not sure of the name of the doctor; he was someone outside the Boston organization. In no way did I think Boston was trying to push steroids; I think they just wanted to educate us on the subject. But you could tell by the faces on the training staff that they didn’t think the doctor would say the things he did.”

That’s all I found. That’s freaking outrageous!  Gammons reporting actually appears to confirm Merloni’s account.  While it does seem that he is reporting that the Red Sox did not intentionally promote steroid use (as evidenced from the “didn’t think the doctor would say the things he did” comment), this is nonetheless a story that should have had more legs.  A former Red Sox explains that Boston management knew some people were probably taking and wanted to give advice to protect them from harming themselves is a big story.  However, this was just swept under the rug right at the time that the Manny steroid scandal was breaking?   The ESPN “preserve Boston’s image at all costs” philosophy runs deep.