No less than just a few days after I mentioned MLB's issues with umps, it's second cousin with buckteeth from Arkansas came back to visit unannounced. Yeeeees, it's everyone's favorite baseball problem: PEDs!
This time, MLB wants to punish at least 20 players for 100 games in direct connection to a PED distributor in Florida. I have two very distinct feelings on this story. First, get the goddamn PEDs out of baseball for good, period. I'm sick of this. I don't like how these guys think it's ok. I don't like how the union hides behind the players who are guilty because of the money involved. Point blank, all players should be subject to random tests, all failed tests should be disclosed and any player caught multiple times should be ineligible for the Hall. Plain and simple. Get the cheats out!
What gets me is MLB supposedly cleaned up it's act, but here we are talking about it again and talking about players still getting access to the PEDs and haven't tested positive. I'm sure there are other players out there who don't want it in the game and it's time they stepped up, went public and stood against cheating. Only then will a stop be put to it. I'd take out the 50 game step and make the lifetime ban the second step and the 100 game step the first.
Which brings me to the second feeling: why?
Well, not in the sense of why are they thinking of bans. I'm not that stupid. It's more like why ban them on association alone. Look, we've hit a double edged sword here. On one hand, they have been connected to a lab that supplies PEDs and that makes them look like cheaters who just haven't been caught. But they also HAVEN'T BEEN CAUGHT. Just because you are at the scene of the crime doesn't mean you committed said crime. It'll sure make you suspect number one, but you still have to prove that being there also means being there when it counted most. This is the category I'd place A's pitcher Bartolo Colon in. He's served a 50 for PED's and now you want to do 100 just for his connection to this? He's served his time and (as far as we know) has quit the stuff and has learned his lesson.
Then there's the "we got you by the balls" class. This is where A-Rod and Ryan Braun belong. A-Rod has not failed a test, but admitted to using. Braun did test positive, but because a package boy somewhere didn't do his job, he walked away scott free. They both used and are laughing they didn't get pinched. Time for them to pony up. If they care ANY BIT about the game they allegedly love and die for, step up, be a man and recuse yourself before MLB does it for you. But of course, they'd lose money and money talks. It'd be a hell of a PR move though, can you just imagine the press on it?
MLB, get the PEDs out NOW, get dirty players out NOW and end the steroid era NOW. Before the game is tainted too far to save it.
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