July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Albert Pujols needed to show us that he isn’t a Cardinals sinner.

There’s been enough talk. Lies. Rafael Palmeiro vowed he didn’t cheat. Alex Rodriguez, too. The list is long.

But it’s Pujols who suffers.

No professional athlete, it seems, is more irked by rampant steroid innuendo than Pujols, who made it clear during Major League Baseball’s All-Star hiatus that he’s got an ax to grind with suspicious minds.

“My house is always open,” said the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, whose .332 batting average, 32 home runs and 87 RBI put him in contention to become the sport’s first Triple Crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. “They can come anytime to do all the tests they want during the offseason. They can come and check every place in my house, they can even come with me in my bathtub. I have nothing to hide.”

Sorry, but even one of the better I-don’t-do-’roids rants isn’t enough to convince us anymore. Not when an entire generation is tainted.

Pujols, 29, says he passed six drug tests last year. Said he’d forfeit his career earnings upon a flunked exam. Says he understands people being disappointed by A-Rod and Manny Ramirez. Says it’s unfair that he has to pay for their mistakes. Says he’s angry. And disappointed. Said he would never do that stuff.

“I can understand why people don’t know who they can trust,” Pujols told USA Today. “I want to be that poster boy for baseball. Just give me the chance.”

How naive. Our benefit-of-a-doubt supply ran out long ago. Now there’s just doubt.

Proof Needed

“What’s gone on with steroids, anytime you see a guy hit a ball out of the ballpark, the questions are going to be there,” said Dodgers manager Joe Torre. “I know it’s going to frustrate Albert because of how hard he works and how proud he is.”

Forget proud. We want proof.

If Pujols wants a chance he must create it. He had a chance during the All-Star break in St. Louis but Mr. Clean whiffed.

Pujols was surrounded by pens, microphones and cameras. They swarmed the hometown hero, who, once again, did nothing more than emphatically assert his innocence.

Baseball players, especially the big boppers, have a real public relations problem. Fair or not, they’re essentially guilty until proven innocent.

Let’s hope Pujols isn’t waiting for assistance from baseball, whose leadership ignored the steroids warning signs. Nor can he expect help from the players association, which was complacent at best, and obstructionist at worst, when it came to this garbage.

Headlines Hijacking

Only Pujols can clear Pujols, which is why he should have hijacked the All-Star festivities. He could have had the headlines all to himself.

Back in 2002, Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly wrote down the name and phone number of a diagnostic testing lab near Chicago and handed it to Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, who was adamant in his denial of performance-enhancing drug use.

Sosa went ballistic, telling Reilly -- and I’m leaving out the four-letter words -- to bug off. Sosa said he’d let the union decide what to do.

Sosa, surprise, surprise, tested positive for a performance enhancer in 2003, the New York Times reported last month.

Now we know why Sosa wouldn’t take the test. Pujols can. And should.

I rang Clinical Collection Management, which has a number of offices in the St. Louis area, including one that’s about 15 minutes from Busch Stadium, according to the woman who answered the telephone but declined to give her name.

Send Invitations

Imagine the attention Pujols would have garnered had he told the All-Star media horde that he was about to undergo a voluntary drug test. And then invited them to watch.

Heck, rent a bus. Let the cameras roll. Challenge the other All-Stars to come along. Like, say, Yankees captain Derek Jeter, who told me he supports blood testing.

The process takes, at most, 20 minutes, said the employee at CCM, which tests athletes at two area high schools for drugs and steroids. All you need is a driver’s license. And $195. A small price to pay, especially for Pujols, who will be paid $14.4 million this season.

Baseball and union officials would be livid at such a one- man spectacle. Tough. Players might feel betrayed. Tough.

Someone has to take a stand, be a leader, force change. It might as well be Pujols, who on Tuesday night was granted the honor of receiving the ceremonial first pitch from a crafty southpaw named Obama.

“As a little boy, I would never have thought I was going to be on this stage,” Pujols said.

The All-Star game was a grand stage, indeed. Even more than usual because the president was there. So many lights. So many cameras.

So little action.

(Scott Soshnick is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Scott Soshnick in New York at ssoshnick@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 15, 2009 21:01 EDT