SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC — In the winter of 2007, Major League Baseball was shaken to its core as Congress, armed with the Mitchell Report, examined the single greatest threat to the integrity of the game: steroids.
In the baseball-crazy Dominican Republic, home to one in 10 major league players, that threat collides with a harsh reality, because finding performance-enhancing drugs here is as easy as buying aspirin.
Take a stroll along the leafy Calle Independencia, a block from this capital's bustling seafront highway, and at every intersection there are two or three pharmacies where steroids are sold openly.
At the brightly lighted Farmax, which shares a crowded strip mall with a cafeteria and a camera repair shop, powerful injectable steroids such as testosterone enanthate can be found behind the toothpaste and cough medicine.
A block away at the Carol pharmacy -- open 24/7 with free delivery -- you can buy not only plush toys and school binders, but the young women in white lab coats at the back of the store will sell you Deca-Durabolin, the anabolic steroid taken by former American League most valuable player Jason Giambi.
In the provincial capital of San Cristobal, about 45 minutes west of here, scantily clad women near the checkout stand of a La Sirena supermarket pass out fliers for a dozen products banned under most drug-testing protocols.
One of the drugs highlighted in the Mitchell Report is the steroid Dianabol, which is available virtually everywhere here, over the counter, for 30 cents a tablet.
Drugs are not the only concern for MLB in a country that produces more baseball talent than any foreign nation.
"Baseball in the Dominican Republic is in jeopardy," says Charles Farrell, a former Washington Post journalist and co-founder of the Dominican Republic Sports and Education Academy (DRSEA). "Just from the integrity issue. There's no simple solution."
Plenty of money is at stake, with 29 of the 30 major league teams operating elaborate training academies here, signing prospects for millions of dollars, and pouring an estimated $100 million annually into the crippled economy.
With stakes this high, cheating has become so prevalent there is a phrase for it here. La buena mentira. The good lie.
MLB and the FBI are investigating on three major fronts.
