One thing the A’s teams of the late 1980s and early ’90s always have been associated with is success.
Another, more recent addition to how those teams are viewed, is that the roster had players later associated with steroid use.
New Mets general manager Sandy Alderson put that team together and has received plenty of credit for the three straight World Series appearances, but he also has gotten criticism for not doing enough to stop the spread of steroids.
“It’s hard to avoid it in light of Jose Canseco’s book,” Alderson said at his press conference yesterday. “In a nutshell, I suspected Jose Canseco of doing steroids, but I never suspected Mark McGwire. It was a time as an organization we actually had begun to emphasize weight training as a part of a regimen that is now widespread, but at the time may have inadvertently gotten us involved with the steroid aspect.”
Since then, Alderson said he’s discussed the issue in front of Congress, as well as George Mitchell and during his interview with the Wilpons, his new bosses.
“We actually had a very active minor league drug policy at the time that included the prohibition of amphetamines,” Alderson said. “But you’re talking about a time in the late ’80s when this issue was emergent in a general sense and there was a personal sense of a lack of awareness, lack of knowledge and ultimately a lack of tools to deal with the problem.”
Alderson also said the team looked into testing its own players, but that doing so would have been illegal in California and would have also violated the collective bargaining agreement.
“If you go back and put all that in perspective, do I wish we had done more?” Alderson said. “I think that’s almost always true in retrospect.”