It’s time to inject some baseball back into this discussion

We are never going to be sure of everything that happened in this era that began (we think) in the 1990s and which, to a far lesser degree, continues even now. (Hi ya, Manny.) Somebody’s going to skate. I can live with that.

Thanks to the long overdue testing, the game is on its way to being cleaned up. But half of baseball could be on Human Growth Hormone, for which we lay people are told there is no viable urine test. I don’t know. I hope not. I really don’t think so. But we can be pretty sure someone’s trying to get a competitive edge by HGHing it up, and that brings us back to the Players Association. It’s time for its leaders to stand up for the good of the game, not the perceived good of their constituents.

The union should be taking the lead, the idea being that the cleaner the public believes the game to be, the better life will be in every way for its members. The Players Association should be lending its support to any effort that would catch the cheaters. It is completely in its best interests.

All parties involved should be united in the desire to protect a precious asset - the game of baseball. Baseball has survived assorted crises in more than a century and a half and should be able to survive this one, too. But like many other good things in our society, its day-to-day greatness is sometimes overwhelmed by an aberrant negative occurrence.

I wonder if anyone has stepped back to examine the Red Sox events of the past week. No, not the news that David Ortiz and Manny Ramírez were among the 104 players who were found to have tested positive on the infamous list. I’m talking about what took place on the field.