MESA, Ariz. -- The most reliable fans in America migrate here every spring, supporters of a team celebrating a complete century of failure. They bask in the informality of training camp, savoring a conversation or two with the men wearing the uniform of the Chicago Cubs.
Derrek Lee, the Cubs' All-Star first baseman, hears from the fans about last year's playoff flop, this year's chances, how to pronounce the last name of Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome.
And steroids?
"Not one thing," Lee said. "Not one word."
The winter was a rocky one for baseball. Barry Bonds appeared in court and Roger Clemens in Congress, with perhaps the best hitter and best pitcher of this generation facing allegations of lying under oath by denying steroid use.
The Mitchell Report put faces on baseball's steroid era, almost 100 faces, blaming players and owners alike for the widespread abuse of performance-enhancing substances.
As winter turned to spring, however, fans appeared to have left any cares behind. Cubs coach Alan Trammell, the former six-time All-Star shortstop for the Detroit Tigers, says fans who chat him up talk about everything but steroids.
"I hate to say it's a nonissue," Trammell said, "but at this point, to me, it is. I haven't had one conversation with a fan about it."
Is the steroid era finally over?
Commissioner Bud Selig would love nothing more than to answer with a definitive yes, but he declined to go that far.
"I'm proud of where baseball is," Selig said. "We've got the toughest testing program in American sports. We've banned amphetamines. We're funding [research into] an HGH test. We're engaged in a lot of public relations stuff," he said, citing partnerships with antidrug initiatives.
"We've made enormous progress," he continued. "That's what our fans think too. That's why we've had the support we've had, and we'll do even better this year. They know we've done something about it."
The Mitchell Report cautioned that baseball's drug testing program, entering its fifth season, "appears to have reduced the use of detectable steroids but by itself has not removed the cloud of suspicion over the game."
The report noted that human growth hormone has become the drug of choice "precisely because it is not detectable." The report also cited recent federal investigations into drug trafficking that linked players to use of performance-enhancing substances, including steroids and HGH.
