Shock, disappointment over A-Rod drugs report

By Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A sense of shock and disappointment was voiced across the United States on Sunday in the wake of a report that baseball's highest paid player Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Major League Baseball withheld comment on Rodriguez after Saturday's Sports Illustrated report that the Yankees slugger was on a list of 104 players that tested positive in confidential testing. But not the nation's newspapers.

"A-ROID" shouted front page headlines in New York's Daily News and Newsday on Sunday.

"ROIDRIGUEZ" fronted the Trentonian of Trenton, New Jersey.

Rodriguez, one year into a 10-year, $275 million pact with the Yankees, has been viewed as a clean player who could lead baseball past a steroids era that has cast doubts over exploits of such celebrated players as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire.

While Major League Baseball's drug policy banned the use of steroids without a valid prescription since 1991, there were no penalties for a positive test in 2003.

That year's confidential testing was conducted in agreement with the players' union to determine if there would be mandatory random testing in 2004 -- which was instituted after a threshold of five percent positive tests was exceeded.

Results of the confidential testing were obtained by the government in conjunction with the BALCO investigation and the alleged involvement of Bonds.

Major League Baseball president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said Sunday he was reserving comment on Rodriguez.

"I would prefer to see (the) entire article before commenting," he told Reuters in an e-mail about the Sports Illustrated report initially posted on its website (si.com).

"They were promised anonymity contractually. We are bound by that contract."

Baseball commentators felt compelled to react.

"So now we have it, the Great American Scandal," wrote Tony Massarotti of the Boston Globe. "Alex Rodriguez meets Steroids. Finally, we have an intersection of our soap operatic A-Rod obsession and the plague that infected our national pastime."

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Rodriguez, the youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs and with a total of 553 at the age of 33 is on course to overtake Bond's record of 762, has been at the center of other controversies.