Schilling: Name All 104 Players Who Tested Positive

By JOSH ALPER

Updated 12:15 PM EST, Mon, Feb 9, 2009

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On his blog, 38 Pitches, Curt Schilling weighs in on the Alex Rodriguez news by making a plea for the release of the names of every player who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003.

"I’d be all for the 104 positives being named, and the game moving on if that is at all possible. In my opinion, if you don’t do that, then the other 600-700 players are going to be guilty by association, forever."

As a player of that era who has been steadfast in his denials of ever touching steroids, it's understandable that Schilling doesn't want to be tainted because of the Jason Giambis and Rafael Palmeiros of the world. He doesn't say it, but it's also not right that Rodriguez is served up because of his stature while four full team's worth of players remain anonymous.

It's interesting, though, that Schilling's all for naming names now, but when he went before Congress he refused to give any evidence of steroid use in baseball. He's argued in the past that naming names under oath requires 100% certainty, but he's quick to offer up his fellow players who took those tests under promise of confidentiality.

Is Schilling so sure that there wasn't a single false positive among the 2003 tests? That's a relatively insignificant issue compared to the way the players' own union let them down.

Why didn't the union do what it was supposed to do and destroy the results after the testing was done? That was the agreement, anonymous testing to find out the scope of the steroid problem and set up a system of testing with punishment for 2004 and beyond. The results were supposed to be destroyed, but they weren't and were found by federal investigators. Schilling, and all members of the Players Association, should be steaming mad about the breach of confidentiality.

He's also wrong about eliminating guilt by association. There are no reliable tests for human growth hormone and there are allegations about the union tipping players, including Rodriguez, off about tests well ahead of time. Taken together, that makes it very hard to completely believe anything about anyone who played baseball during those years.

Revealing more names wouldn't eliminate anything. It would just continue to cast the last 20-odd years of baseball history in a dark shade of doubt, something that doesn't help Schilling or any other baseball player from that era.