Major League Baseball Steroid abuse: Seán Dunneexamines the latest development in baseball's sorry saga, with one fan taking a club to court for providing a "fraudulent" product

Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, better known as the pop group Milli Vanilli, enjoyed great success early in their career by selling millions of albums and winning a Grammy for Best New Artist early in 1990.

Their good fortune quickly changed though when, soon after, they finally confessed that during a live performance in July, 1989, when the recording of the song the duo were supposedly singing began to skip, they had been merely lip-synching.

The group later admitted to lip-synching at other concerts and hadn't been singing at all on their albums, which led to the forfeiture of their Grammy.

Irate fans reacted to the revelations by saying it was an example of consumer fraud, as they felt they were fraudulently told that Pilatus and Morvan were singing at concerts and on albums. Several lawsuits were filed against both Milli Vanilli and Arista Records.

The courts ruled in favour of the fans, awarding rebates of $1-$3 to those who had purchased tickets and albums.

James Frey published his memoirs in two books, Million Little Pieces (2003) and My Friend Leonard (2005). Oprah Winfrey included Million Little Pieces as part of her book club, and Frey appeared as a guest on Oprah's show to tell his amazing story of addiction and recovery to millions of her viewers. The book became an international hit, selling over four million copies, but the credibility of the stories told within Frey's book began to be questioned.

The Smoking Gun website discovered several false claims and gross exaggerations after conducting an investigation into police reports of events described in Frey's stories.

Readers filed a class action lawsuit against Random House after claiming the book was defined as a "memoir", and not as fiction. Courts again ruled in favour of the complainants, and Random House were forced to set aside $2.35 million to provide any readers who bought the book prior to Frey's admission with a full refund.

Random House have also placed a sticker within books published after the revelations, stating that the book should not be considered a "memoir".

Major League Baseball in the US enjoyed a rapid increase in popularity when a famous home run race ensued between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998.

The home run made baseball popular again, and soon many players were looking bigger, and hitting more home runs. Fans loved it. The home run provided baseball with an exciting, quick score comparable to a slam dunk in the NBA or a touchdown in the NFL.

Baseball franchise owners also loved the home run, as ticket sales and television ratings soared.

However, similar to the fates of Milli Vanilli and James Frey, the home runs soon attracted suspicion. A series of allegations, investigations and admissions relating to steroid use led fans to question the authenticity of player performances.

This has recently led to Senator George Mitchell's $20 million internal investigation of steroid use in Major League Baseball (MLB) that culminated in a 400-page report. Sen Mitchell was chosen to lead the investigation, even though he is a director on the boards of both the Boston Red Sox and the Walt Disney Company.

The Walt Disney Company own ESPN, the biggest broadcaster of MLB games.

This apparent conflict of interest forced many to question the credibility and focus of Mitchell's report. No members of the Red Sox were named in his report. There were no serious allegations made against any of the other team directors or against the structure of the league itself. The only people named were approximately 90 players, along with a small group of ball boys and athletic trainers.

Despite all of the media coverage and a congressional investigation, which continues, those who profited most from ticket sales and television viewership have had little to answer for.

But this may soon change, due to the latest development in the baseball steroids scandal.

Matthew Mitchell (no relation to the senator) is a lifetime fan of the New York Yankees, and is suing the team for $221 (€149), which happens to be the sum he paid for five Yankees games between 2002 and 2007. Several Yankees players identified in the congressional investigation - Andy Pettite, Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield - played in the games Mitchell attended.

Mitchell feels the Yankees were guilty of "fraudulent practice" when they sold tickets to games that featured steroid-using players:

"I believe I was provided with artificial baseball," Mitchell claims in his suit. "There is implicit agreement between the team and fans that they will provide an honest and fair product.

"I think owners and general managers knew, by common sense if nothing else, but didn't want a 'black eye' for the sport, as they were trying to recover from the 1994 strike. MLB wanted to pretend it wasn't happening."

The key difference with Matthew Mitchell's action is that he is attempting to hold the owners responsible for what he considers to be a version of consumer fraud.

Fans enter into contractual agreements with teams when they purchase tickets to attend baseball games, and Mitchell believes he was defrauded of watching real baseball given certain player performances were artificially enhanced through the use of steroids.

Furthermore, unlike the focus of most sports talk radio programmes and congressional investigations, Mitchell is now attempting to hold owners accountable for the steroids era that has left a permanent mark on the history of baseball.

Matthew Mitchell will face a representative of the New York Yankees in a courtroom next Wednesday. The stage is set for a betrayed baseball fan in a Brooklyn courtroom potentially to push the first domino that could begin a process of more accurately addressing baseball's past sins.

Fans, players, and certainly owners, will be watching.

Seán Dunne is a post-graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Trinity College, Dublin