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O’Connor: Sandy Alderson needs to apologize for steroids

ESPN New York’s Ian O’Connor thinks Sandy Alderson may be a great GM choice for the Mets, but he thinks he needs to atone for past sins before taking the job:

But when he steps to the microphone as Omar Minaya’s replacement, Alderson should take the time of offer an apology. He should say he’s sorry for being an enabler at a time when baseball desperately needed a whistle-blower and a leader. He should say he’s sorry for allowing the monstrous steroid culture to grow fangs on his watch.

Sandy Alderson was a general manager for 14 years: 1983-1997. During that time there were a few other general managers running teams with ballplayers who took PEDs. Namely all of them. Is O’Connor asking for apologies from Pat Gillick? Lou Gorman? Gene Michael? John Schuerholz? Syd Thryft? I’m guessing not.

Based on his column, of course, O’Connor’s response would be that Alderson deserves more blame than anyone else because he was the A’s GM. In my view, such logic only washes if you believe that steroids were invented by Jose Canseco in Oakland in 1989 and that from that point forward, steroids were a purely Oakland Athletics’ phenomenon. Both of those ideas are nonsense, of course. And I think even O’Connor would agree that PEDs became a baseball-wide problem, not one attributable to a single clubhouse.

But hey, maybe O’Connor has a point here. And maybe it’s a point he truly believes, rather than one that he’s merely throwing out there because it made for a nice angry column during the lull between playoff games. If that’s the case, I fully expect O’Connor to be at the press conference in which Sandy Alderson is introduced as the Mets’ new GM and to ask Alderson to make the apology he believes is warranted.

Shall we hold our breath?