Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Derek Jeter gave baseball fans hope, and union chief Don Fehr a migraine, in February 2008 when he told me that blood testing wouldn’t be an invasion of privacy.

It was a refreshing thing to hear from a natural-born leader, and not a highly paid lawyer, on the subject of steroids and baseball.

“You can test for whatever you want,” Jeter told me that day, knowing well that such a statement placed him at odds with the most powerful union in professional sports. “We get pricked by needles anyway in spring training, so we have a lot of blood work to begin with.”

At last, I thought, this is the moment for which fans have been waiting. This was the death knell for performance-enhancing drugs. The players were, at long last, willing to open their veins instead of their mouths, which for too long had delivered hollow proclamations of “Not me.”

Consider the messenger. This wasn’t some journeyman or headline-seeking nitwit. This was Jeter, whose opinion carries weight. We’re talking about the captain of the New York Yankees, one of the most respected players in the game, showing the guts to dissent. Surely others would follow.

I bring this up now because the Boston Red Sox and Yankees open a four-game series in the Bronx tonight. It’s the perfect platform -- right teams, right time -- for Jeter to renew his call and, this time, follow it through.

‘Steroid Series’

If a Mets-Yankees matchup can carry the “Subway Series” sobriquet, surely we can attach “Steroids Series” to the meeting of these storied and sullied franchises. Not that every team didn’t -- and doesn’t -- have its cheaters. But these are high-profile teams with high-profile players, such as Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz.

Last week, courtesy of the New York Times, we learned that Manny Ramirez and Ortiz, Boston’s biggest bats in 2004 and 2007, when the Red Sox won the World Series, were among the 100 or so players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. The players were told the results would be anonymous, but marquee names have been leaked.

Ortiz said he was “blindsided” by the news. Ramirez, now with the Los Angeles Dodgers, didn’t say anything. He was suspended earlier this season for a positive test.

More silence.

One voice, especially Jeter’s, can become two. And so on. And then Fehr, who is retiring as union chief in March, and Michael Weiner, his successor, must accept that a clean game is the will of the membership. It has to come from the players. It has to start somewhere.

Securing a Legacy

This is a chance for Jeter to cement an even more important legacy than shortstop sensation. Yes, we’ll always remember him tracking a fly ball, diving into the stands, face first. And his backhanded flip against Oakland in Game 3 of the 2001 Division Series is etched into baseball lore.

Jeter is destined for Cooperstown, the one-stoplight village in central New York where kids trek every year to gawk at their heroes. Jeter can be the antidote to asterisks, innuendo and suspicion. He can go down in history as a great player, sure, but a courageous reformer, too. You tell me, which is the more lasting legacy?

Jeter is 35, closer to retired than rookie. Now is the time to speak up. If you think that baseball is just entertainment or don’t care what players were injecting, listen to former player Doug Glanville.

What’s Been Lost

“Something dear has been lost,” he wrote in an op-ed piece for the New York Times. “The culture of a game that had the rare ability to bridge generations of fans and players has been broken. Before the steroid era, a home run was a home run and we could look at and admire and compare the achievements of Mantle, Aaron, Kaline, Ruth, Schmidt and Mays and feel like we were speaking the same language. The steroid era wipes that out.”

Jeter can lead the restoration project that once again links past and present in symmetry, not syringe-aided statistics.

Reggie Jackson and Jim Bunning are among the hall of famers who don’t want steroid cheats enshrined. Hank Aaron, who purists still consider the rightful home-run king, wants all the names on the 2003 list made public.

“We are not done with the story,” hall-of-fame pitcher Tom Seaver said the other day.

How can the story be over when players still aren’t tested for human growth hormone, which was added to baseball’s list of banned substances in 2005.

If Jeter needs a reminder of work to be done all he has to do is scan the clubhouse for teammate Andy Pettitte, who admitted using HGH.

It’s about recognizing the past to forge a better future.

Jeter is not only a student of baseball history but a caretaker, too. That’s why, of all the artifacts at the recently razed Yankee Stadium, he coveted the sign that hung in the tunnel from the clubhouse to the dugout. It reminds every player of what Joe DiMaggio said in October 1949: I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.

The legacy of Jeter, the Yankees star, is secure. The question is: Does he want more?

(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: August 5, 2009 21:01 EDT