Would you let Kenneth Lay or Jeffrey Skilling fix Enron?

How about letting Bernie Madoff control the checkbook when he gets around to paying restitution for his alleged crimes?

It’s probably unfair to compare the allegations against Madoff and Lay with anything that Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association have been accused of doing during the steroid era.

But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that for the sake of the game’s credibility it’s still time for Commissioner Bud Selig, Union Chief Donald Fehr and the association’s Chief Operating Officer Gene Orza to call it a career.

All three were in their positions of power before and during the steroid era. They were the chief opponents butting heads during the 1994 strike season that wiped out the World Series and caused a dramatic decrease in fan interest.

Granted, they have all been involved in agreeing to a reasonably stringent drug testing policy that, in theory, should minimize the effect of performance-enhancing drugs going forward.

Had the Mitchell Report been the end of it one could argue – though I would disagree – that the trio and their various lieutenants had done enough to stop the problem and put the game back on the right track.

But the allegations haven’t stopped. Recent reports by Sports Illustrated have not only fingered Alex Rodriguez. They’ve now brought allegations against Orza, charging that he was tipping off ballplayers about when they were going to be drug tested.

Not surprisingly, Fehr has denied the allegations and defended the union’s actions. And maybe in the long run he’ll be proven right.

But this collection of high-ranking executives have taken Major League Baseball too far down the wrong path. They already had even before these allegations surfaced. Steroids were not against the rules of Major League Baseball at the time the events were taking place but they were against the laws of the United States of America.

As such the trio of leaders and anyone else in power for the league or the union at the time had a responsibility to act – not to sweep the rumors and the allegations under the rug, as is what happened for so long. Hell, according to the New York Sun much of the union’s own membership resents that the organization fought against drug testing as long as they did.

So at this point it no longer matters whether Orza did or didn’t tip players off. It no longer matters that the league has one of the more stringent drug policies in professional sports.

It’s time for new leadership for both the league and the union. They can deny, deny and deny as often as the day is long, but the damage these guys have done and the damage they have allowed others to do to the game of baseball just keeps multiplying. For as long as these guys remain in their positions of power there will continue to be questions about the credibility of the game.

And that is a shame.