BROOKE GLADSTONE: Baseball fans wishing the sports steroids scandal would just go away met with disappointment in Thursday's sports section. Turns out Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley admits to taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs and has told investigators about other players also on the juice. But if those players' sins ever hit print, the news probably won't come from the beat reporters who cover them on the field every day. And that frustrates former Sports Illustrated writer, Jeff Pearlman. Last week in Slate, he griped that the San Francisco Chronicle's recent reporting on notorious juicer Barry Bonds has inspired no investigative zeal in baseball's ever-trusting press corps. Take, for example, a recent Sports Illustrated cover photo of St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, currently on track to break Bonds’ single-season home run record. A swing of beauty, marveled the magazine. All hail the next home run king. Pearlman's not impressed.

JEFF PEARLMAN: I'm not saying he's not a great player, and I'm not even saying he's doing things illegally. What I'm saying is in this era after steroids, when writers across the board, including myself, are fooled time and time again, I think we really have to look at the game now with a very skeptical eye. You know, I just can't believe that, all right, here's Jason Giambi in New York City. Giambi admits he uses steroids in front of a grand jury. He loses a lot of weight. He becomes a basically impotent ballplayer, where he can't do anything. The Yankees want to send him down to the minor leagues. Now, here he is, he's hitting home runs again, he's as big as ever, as powerful as ever, playing great, and everyone's praising the guy. Nobody's questioning what went on. I'm not saying these guys are definitely using. What I'm saying is somebody, I think, needs to be digging through these guys' garbage, to be going to the pharmacies where guys get steroids, in the Dominican Republic. I want to know for a fact if the stuff I'm covering and I'm watching, and my kids are watching, is legitimate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So, Jeff, how do you account for the gentle treatment of Giambi and Pujols? Is it just that, say, Pujols is so loveable that reporters are giving him a pass?

JEFF PEARLMAN: I think part of is that they're likeable guys, and Barry Bonds wasn't. Barry Bonds for 20 years has been antagonizing the media, and I think there's certainly a little bit of revenge factor here. But I think another major thing is laziness on the part of reporters, on the part of newspapers. You know, I worked at two newspapers surrounding my time at Sports Illustrated, the Nashville Tennessean and Newsday. Both places, while I was there, severely cut their budgets, and I just don't think newspapers are willing to spend the time, the manpower to look into heavy, heavy issues that may not bring anything. The San Francisco Chronicle was the exception in that they devoted the time and resources to do that story, and it was easy, then, for reporters like myself, you know, for S.I., for ESPN, for everybody to jump on board and start poking around for Bonds stuff, because, thanks to the Chronicle, we knew it was there. I have to say another part of it, without doubt, is steroid fatigue. You know, it's funny. A lot of ballplayers think that we writers love covering this stuff and that it's, you know, the story we've been waiting for, and it's great. You know, the truth of the matter is it's a horrible story to cover. It's no fun. You're talking about the demise of the game that you love. You know, I'm like a lot of sportswriters, I grew up sitting in front of a television with a mitt in one hand, a ball in the other, mimicking these guys. I love baseball. All these guys love baseball. And I think there's a lot of fatigue among writers who just want to move on, who just want to cover the game again, who want to be sportswriters again, not investigative writers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much of this reluctance to ask those questions, though, is really about losing access to the players? I mean, baseball writers have to churn out stories 162 games a year.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Right. That's a good question. I mean, the thing is this. The one thing the Chronicle guys did right is they did not assign their Giants beat writer to do this story. The two guys who wrote the story, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, they were not baseball beat writers. They were investigative writers. It would be very, very hard for a beat writer to do this sort of story, because a baseball clubhouse is a very, very, very, very difficult place to navigate. You try so hard to develop this trust relationship with these guys, and it's such a one-sided relationship. They have all the power in that relationship. They have everything you need. You have nothing they need. And if you violate any sort of relationship you made by saying, so, are you using steroids? Let me ask you. You know, there are a lot of suspicions that you've been juicing. Why don't you tell me? – it's dead. You lose that relationship. It's over. I covered baseball at S.I. from '96 to 2002, and we all knew there were guys on every team who you'd say, like, that guy's juicing, that guy's juicing. Oh, that guy's using, no doubt about it. It wasn't a mystery. You know, sometimes players would tell a reporter off the record. You know, and it actually presents a very interesting dilemma if a ballplayer tells you off the record that he's using steroids, because you can't report it. You know, he's telling you this almost to protect himself, in a way, and you can't even use that material to go to other players and talk about it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You mentioned at the beginning of the interview that you'd been tricked so many times, and I get the feeling that's made you pretty mad, too. Was there one particular betrayal that got under your skin?

JEFF PEARLMAN: There was one guy in particular who I can't name, because nothing's been on the record, who – I went to a restaurant with him during spring training, and he was a guy who I found very likeable and very, you know, full of integrity and honesty, and he was a great profile. He was an outfielder in a national league. That's all I'll say. And I asked him, what about steroids? What do you think? And he gave me this long-winded answer about how it just isn't right, and, you know, it's not worth hurting myself. And then I found out beyond a doubt that he's been using. And I hate that. And I hate that I covered Jason Giambi when Jason Giambi was with the A's, and I guess I was just dumb. I wrote about this loveable power hitter who's really worked his way up and he's done all these great things, and it was all a lie. It was B.S. And there were other guys who really did work their way up, who really did have integrity. This is what bothers me the most. There are so many guys out there who don't use. I look at a guy, like Ken Griffey on the Reds, who's 35 years old. Griffey is an honorable guy, a guy with integrity and decency, who has had a brilliant career. And because guys like Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi came along and took the easy way, a guy like this, or a guy like Fred McGriff, their careers are obscured. Then all of a sudden they're in that second tier of players, and it's just not fair. Those are the guys that, you know, it really hurts me for, and why I think this is worth it, because it's such a violation of the decency and the integrity that most baseball players show.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Thanks very much.

JEFF PEARLMAN: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jeff Pearlman is author of Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. And since we're on the subject of what we hate about sports media, here's an old gripe of Bob's from about five years back.