Pap Smear: Papelbon says the Boston Redshots were injecting players before games

Another day, another stink bomb in Major League Baseball's long-lost war on drugs.

Yesterday, Jonathan Papelbon - he of the meltdown that devoured Boston - disclosed that Redshots operatives regularly injected him with Toradol, yet another drug nobody has ever heard of until now. They shot him up before games, and he felt like a toreador. It was a legal drug. But it could be a reason why Clay Buchholz missed a bunch of games last year with esophagitis, a respiratory infection that put him into intensive care. Breathing issues are a side-effect of Toradol.

OK, we've prattled about Selig's fake War on Drugs in the past. Nobody knows what to do. MLB keeps shooting itself, while other sports allow 300-pound linebackers to skate. Baseball has seen so many great individual records - HRs, batting average, wins, etc. - shattered, creating immediate suspects. That conjures the the image of vastly wealthy athletes using their money to secure illegal and unfair advantages over the rest of the herd. Hello, A-Rod.

But now we see a different pattern emerging, and it's far more insidious than anything cooked up by Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds. Papelbon is the second Boston star in a week to disclose a whispered organizational network that suggested players juice, and even offered them drugs. (Curt Schilling said last week team officials suggested he take shots to prolong his fading career.) This isn't the scenario of a rogue millionaire. This is institutional corruption. Admiral Selig might want to ask how high the secrets extended within the Redshot order. And if the owners didn't know, how hard were they looking?

Listen: This isn't just pure Boston bashing. It could come back to bite the Yankees. But Papelbon has done the right thing. Others need to come forward too. There has always been a putrid stench to the way MLB enforces its policy: Somebody leaks a name, and the news media builds the gallows and gets the rope. The others - hundreds of current and ex-players - live in fear that a reporter will call and say, "Your name turned up on the list."

Selig owns the list. It's time for players to start talking. I thought I'd never say this:

Bravo, Pap!