The thought struck me as I was working on this column about baseball’s latest steroids scandal that has dominated baseball news in the weeks leading to the start of spring training this week.

Everyone from the commissioner on down gets in a tizzy over steroids, especially when reports emerge identifying users or players who have allegedly used. Major League Baseball, with union cooperation, has steadily strengthened its testing program to the point where it boasts of having the toughest testing program in professional sports.

All well and good.

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Billy Sample hasn’t played in the major leagues for a quarter of a century. “I was successfully colluded out of the game after the 1986 season,” the former outfielder said this week. He was, he meant, a victim of the clubs’ collusive conspiracy against free agents in the latter half of the 1980s.

Sample, however, suffered a double dose of Major League Baseball’s bad behavior. Four years ago he was released from his role as an announcer and a writer with the MLB television network and MLB.com.

“My last week was in December 2008,” he said. “They let go about four of us who were making the most money. I never sat around to listen to what they had to say.”

But they can’t get rid of Billy Sample that easily. He’s back, even if it’s not with the baseball establishment. He is back as a filmmaker with a satirical comedy that he has written, co-directed and acted in, making him a triple threat.

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Baseball’s Lachemann brothers don’t know what the week leading up to the Super Bowl has been like for brothers John and Jim Harbaugh; the Lachemanns haven’t had the equivalent World Series experience that the Harbaughs have had with the Super Bowl. Born exactly 15 months apart, John, 50, coaches the Baltimore Ravens, Jim, 49, the San Francisco 49ers.

But Rene Lachemann said, “Each one is getting their team prepared. So much is going on in football. When it’s all done and over with, since they can’t meet for Thanksgiving, maybe they can for the Fourth of July and the winner has the right to say ‘ok, bring me a hamburger or a beer.’”

“That’s how brothers are,” he added. “Whoever wins will needle the other. It’s only human nature. We still battle in everything.”

The Lachemann brothers, Rene and Marcel, hold a unique place in modern baseball history. They are the only brothers who have managed in the major leagues since 1900, which is considered Major League Baseball’s modern era.

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