Former Texas Ranger, Rick Helling, was hand picked by Fehr to be his assistant in the Major League Baseball Players’ Association. A Standford product, he didn’t have a very extraordinary career in baseball. He scored innings and won games for the Rangers.

But what is distinctive about Helling is his attendance at the player’s union. As a matter of fact he was the one who had the foresight and warned the players of steroids.

In Joe Torre’s “Yankee Years” he told of how Helling had forseen the extent of damage steroids was going to bring to baseball.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“There is this problem with steroids,” Helling told them. “It’s happening. It’s real. And it’s so prevalent that guys who aren’t doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they’re falling behind. It’s not a level playing field. We’ve got to figure out a way to address it.

“It’s a bigger deal than people think. It’s noticeable enough that it’s creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it’s gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It’s one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn’t care whether it’s right or wrong. But it’s another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that’s what’s happening. And I don’t feel like this is the right way to go.”

By doing this, Helling was in a way telling the union to do something about it. According to David Cone, Rick was the only one to stand up and say its enough, party’s over. Fehr, in a separate interview said that he didn’t recall Helling saying such thing. He said he hired Helling because he served well in the MLBPA executive board and that he would know how to represent the association.

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Tags: Fehr, Joe Torre, MLBPA, Rick Helling, steroids, The Yankee Years

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The Steroid Scandal in the Major League Baseball has reached new heights pushing 2 MLB Officials in front of the pack of who’s to blame despite their efforts to remain out of the spotlight. Baseball superstars like McGwire, Sosa and now A-Rod have taken the heat for MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and Donald Fehr Executive Director for MLB Players Association.

Rumors have spread in the 1980s that Major League players have been on steroids. A rookie on the 1988 Oakland A’s leaked that player Jose Canseco was on the drug which was later confirmed. Fehr and Selig had appeared before the congress stating they had no knowledge of PEDs being used in the MLB. But both had been with the MLB in the 80’s and the early 90s respectively and can no longer deny that they knew players have been pumping themselves with steroids to get ahead in the game. Had they been turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to an issue that had only escalated when Alex Rodriguez confessed to using them in 2001 through 2003?

From the Bleacher Report:

Selig went before Congress in 2005 and stated that he had no idea that there was a PED problem building in the industry in the 1990’s. Yet, in the wake of the Alex Rodriguez revelations, Selig himself said that he proposed a steroid testing program to the player’s union in 1995. Fehr has claimed no knowledge of the problem yet his underling, Gene Orza, was going around major league clubhouses in 2004 informing players that they had failed drug tests and then warning them that they would be tested in the next few weeks.

They knew. What other conclusion is there to be reached? They did and said nothing about it until called to the carpet in Congress at least, by Selig’s recent admission, ten years after the subject first came up. And both of them have lied about their knowledge of the situation to keep the heat on the users rather than themselves, the enablers.

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Tags: Alex Rodriguez, Fehr, Jose Canseco, Major League Baseball, Selig, steroids

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