It’s hard to imagine that the New York Yankees could do something sleazier and more dishonorable than attempt to get out of paying Jason Giambi the $76 million left on his contract.

The Yankees, as common sense will tell you, could not possibly have signed Giambi to a $120 million contract without having the same suspicions of the strapping first baseman that dawned on virtually everyone else who gave the matter two seconds of thought. It is far more likely that the Yankees were explicitly aware of Giambi’s use of performance-enhancing drugs than that they had mere suspicions.

In other words, that $120 million contract was partially predicated on Giambi’s use of Deca Durabolin, testosterone, Clomid, human growth hormone, and God knows what else. The Yankees were, with a knowing wink, paying someone to inject himself with potentially dangerous and definitely illegal drugs in the hopes that the edge they gave him would help them win a World Series. They even allowed Giambi’s personal trainer, Bob Alejo, free rein in the clubhouse during the 2002 season. It’s a good bet that Alejo’s job responsibilities entailed more than simply helping his client maintain proper form on squat thrusts.

On precisely what grounds, then, would they hope to void his contract? Essentially, that the performance-enhancing drugs they were paying him to take ended up damaging his body rather than enhancing it.

Recent reports have even had it that the Yankees are threatening to make Giambi a “poster boy” for steroids abuse if he doesn’t agree to a buy-out of his contract that will save the Yankees tens of millions of dollars. This is shameful hypocrisy. If the Yankees wanted to reap the rewards of Giambi’s drug abuse without incurring any of the risks, they should have negotiated a clause to that effect into his contract.

As it turns, all of this is academic. The Yankees are not going to void Giambi’s contract, because they have no legal standing to do so. The clauses in his contract covering physical condition as it relates to drug use are superseded by the Collective Bargaining Agreement between labor and management, which makes no provision for the termination of contracts for drug related reasons. Giambi violated no MLB policies in using performance enhancers up until 2002, and even had he failed drug tests in the last two years, he would have faced suspensions and fines, not the voiding of his contract.

The union position is that the Yankees, if they wished to void Giambi’s contract, would have to prove that his drug use directly damaged the value of the franchise. This is a standard they almost certainly cannot meet.

This does not mean that the Yankees can or should do nothing. Giambi is a contemptible fraud, and whatever the Yankees’ culpability in this squalid scandal, the team should not allow him to suit up again in pinstripes.

If they are merely interested in getting rid of him while keeping some shred of dignity, they ought to cut him a check for $82 million and tell him to go away. And if they are truly convinced that they need to rid their team of steroid users, they should make out a check to Gary Sheffield, as well. And they shouldn’t stop there.

It’s hopelessly naive to think that only such obvious villains as Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds owe much of their success to performance enhancers. Neither of these two, after all, is alone among home-run kings in having added huge amounts of muscle years after making their major league debut. And greatly increased mass is hardly the only thing that might raise suspicions about a player.

What of players who return to their team just weeks after suffering potentially career-ending injuries, showing no signs whatever of diminished skill or physical capability? What of players who maintain elite offensive performance at difficult defensive positions while playing 140 games a year at ages where players of previous generations would already have been retired?

What of players who are drafted as non-prospects and come out of nowhere to put up Hall of Fame performance? What of pitchers who throw harder at 40 than they did at 30?

The whispers that surrounded Giambi for years were based on little more evidence than that which points to dozens of players. If the baseball establishment is truly and genuinely outraged about steroids, it’s not fair for the easy targets – unpopular players like Giambi, Sheffield, and Bonds – to take all the blame while everyone else slips quietly by.

The Yankees almost certainly know which of their players are on steroids and which aren’t. Their personal trainers can tell which bodies are juiced and their medical staff knows which chronic injuries betray telltale signs of abuse. If, in trying to wriggle out of their commitment to Giambi, the Yankees have motives other than the most crass and self-interested ones imaginable, they ought to buy every one of those players out of the full value of their contracts and try to win the pennant next year with the likes of John Olerud.

Of course, they’ll do no such thing. The Yankees are just trying to turn a public relations nightmare into an opportunity to get rid of a bad contract. Nothing else could be expected of them, but if they actually rose to the occasion, they might wash some of the stench from the flags that fly above Yankee Stadium.