What do the players have to hide?

The Major League Baseball Players' Association is arguably the most successful union in the history of the United States.

Under the leadership of Marvin Miller and the gutsy determination of players like Curt Flood, the players went from fighting for more laundry money to wash their socks to breaking the reserve clause which treated grown men like chattel, binding them to their employers for the life of their baseball career even after the expiration of their contracts.

Free agency resulted and baseball players are among the highest paid entertainers in the world.

Utility infielders now make over a million dollars per season after playing in the big leagues a few years and the union has won practically every court battle against the owners it has fought.

It is the job of a union to represent the best interests of its members. Few unions have done that as well as the MLBPA.

Donald Fehr is now the head of the MLBPA and he has been successful over the past decade in that capacity.

The union and its members have continued to prosper under Fehr's leadership.

Part of being a union boss is to know what is in the best interests of your members both in the long term and the short term.

Fehr has demonstrated this through the years.

For example, he negotiated successfully in the last round of collective bargaining instead of going on strike, knowing that even if the players "won" a strike, the damage to the sport would be so great that everybody would lose.

This is why Fehr's recent stand on steroid testing is so troubling.

He is an intelligent man, and a tough and savvy negotiator who fights for what's best for his clients.

Baseball has come under a dark cloud in the past few years over rampant rumors of steroid use by many star players.

Home runs have increased dramatically in the past decade and while smaller ballparks and expansion certainly played a role in that, the size of ballplayers has unquestionably increased as well.

Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti have admitted to steroid use during their careers.

Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single season home run record while admittedly using andro, which "works like a steroid" and is banned by the NFL, International Olympic Committee and NCAA among other umbrella organizations.

The recent arrest of Barry Bonds' trainer has put a further taint on his recent success and on the game itself.

Baseball has never had a steroid policy until last year when tests reportedly came back positive in an unanticipated number of cases.

Now, with Congress investigating and names like Bonds, Giambi and Sheffield being tossed about, Major League Baseball wants to get tough on steroids.

However, for some strange reason, the MLBPA is against it.

It's more than the fact that rumors of steroid use taint the sanctity of the game and hurt fan interest.

It's more than the fact that using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs is cheating and setting a poor example for children who still look to baseball players as role models.

The bottom line is that almost every available report indicates that steroid use is harmful to the long-term health of the user.

Despite this fact, Fehr has compared steroid use to smoking cigarettes and seems to be protecting the "rights" of his players to use them.

This approach is not in the best interests of baseball and more importantly, not in the best interests of baseball players, many of whom could end up suffering harmful effects such as sterility, permanent injury of even cancer like former NFL star Lyle Alzado did.

The comparison to cigarette smoking is a poor one-smoking does not enhance one's performance unless the competition is who can get cancer the quickest.

Steroids clearly do give baseball players a competitive edge.

It is clearly not in the long-term interests of the members of the MLBPA to use steroids -- even if many of them don't see it now.

It is the job of Donald Fehr to get that message across to his rank and file.

Fehr is not a stupid man.

He has fought and won many a legal and public relations battle.

Opposing steroid testing can only be a public relations disaster for the players.

So the obvious question is -- what do the players have to hide?