Whistleblower Joining MLBPA Staff

The Major League Baseball Players' Association today announced that former big-league pitchers Rick Helling and Mike Myers are joining the union staff as special assistants to the Executive Director.

On the face of it, not surprising. Helling and Myers were active in the union in their playing days, both serving on the executive board.

But Helling, as Tom Verducci explained in The Yankee Years was ignored by the union when he attempted to warn about the rise of steroids use.

As Verducci wrote:

Rick Helling, a 27-year-old righthanded pitcher and the players' representative for the Texas Rangers, stood up at the (1998) winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players Association and made an announcement. He told his fellow union leaders that steroid use by ballplayers had grown rampant and was corrupting the game.

"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."

What happened, of course, is nothing. The players not using didn't have enough of a voice, and union leadership didn't like the idea of drug testing. They didn't cave until nearly five years later.

Now we can hope that when Helling speaks up, he'll be heeded.