But again, 211 is excessive and it's just Bud Selig trying to say he really "cleaned" the game up before he rides off into the sunset while the whole ugly steroid era happened on his watch.
To be fair to Selig, he couldn't begin to clean up the game without a negotiated CBA with the player's union. And the former head of the union, Donald Fehr, was dead set against any form of testing as he considered it a violation of the players' privacy. Then 9/11 happened and both Fehr/Selig decided a strike at that time was not in the nation's best interests. Thus, Fehr gave in a tiny bit with a ridiculous unofficial year of testing....where if a certain percentage of players tested positive, then stronger testing would follow the next season. I'm sure Fehr believed that the players would be smart enough to test clean for one season....he was wrong, lol.
The media was petrified of lawsuits and kept quiet about players arriving in spring training with an extra 20 lbs of solid muscle. They deserve a chunk of the blame and shouldn't point fingers at Selig until they acknowledge their own role in the steroid era.
