Cheating in Baseball

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig yesterday announced sanctions against 13 more players in the Biogenesis Lab scandal.  Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers outfielder and 2011 league MVP, was the first player to agree to a deal with the commissioner’s office from the scandal; he accepted a 65-game suspension in late July.  Braun failed a test last year but the results were overturned on a technicality.  Throughout the ordeal he repeatedly denied using banned substances.

The players’ names and accounts with the lab, which manufactured and sold a variety of performance enhancing drugs banned by MLB, were leaked by an employee.  Later, the lab’s founder, Anthony Bosch, cut a deal with MLB and provided information that incriminated the lab’s customers.

For me, a passionate baseball fan, the scandal represents all that is wrong with the game.  The league’s response, rather than being a triumph for those who want to clean up the game, is a sorry embarrassment that further tarnishes the game.  I understand the temptation by players to dope—big contracts, lucrative endorsements, the rush of winning—but it’s simply stealing.  Stealing from other players who are playing clean, stealing from the owners, stealing from the fans and stealing from the legacy of past players whose records were earned honestly.

 

Twelve players received 50-game suspensions yesterday.  What is noteworthy is that none has ever failed a drug test. 

The length of the suspensions means that Jhonny Peralta, of the Detroit Tigers, and Nelson Cruz, of the Texas Rangers, will be available if their teams, which are in the playoff hunt, advance to the postseason.  All but one of the 13 have agreed to not challenge the findings.

Alex Rodriguez, the 38-year-old New York Yankees third baseman, received a 211-game suspension.  His penalty was so long because, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig noted, A-Rod has already admitted taking human growth hormone and other performance enhancing drugs, though before they were banned by Major League Baseball.  A-Rod has been adamant in denying using PEDs while they were prohibited in baseball.  Reports indicate Selig believed A-Rod obstructed MLB’s investigation and was not truthful in his denials.

A-Rod is appealing the decision and will be allowed to play until a hearing is held, sometime after the season.  If the suspension, and its length, are upheld, A-Rod would be banned from baseball into the 2015 season.

A-Rod’s situation is complicated by a number of issues.  His performance has declined, as usually happens with players his age, and last season in the first-round playoff series with Detroit, which the Yankees lost, he was benched for poor play. 

The Yankees would seemingly love to get out from under the record-setting $275 million contract they gave A-Rod before the 2008 season.   He still has $114 million remaining on his contract, which runs through 2017, and he stands to collect $25 million a year for the next four years, until he is 42 years old, when most players are well past their peak.  Thanks to that contract and others, such as for first baseman Mark Teixiera, the team is well over the league salary cap and paying a so-called luxury tax.

A-Rod has been on the disabled list all season after having hip surgery in the offseason but was recalled yesterday and played his first game of the season against the White Sox in Chicago.  The Yankees are in third place in the American League East division, 9.5 games out of first place, and would have to leapfrog four teams to claim a Wild Card berth.

Buck Showalter, the Orioles manager, said in an interview before the penalties were announced that if the Yankees are allowed to void their contract with A-Rod, they would be free to once again spend freely for free agents and likely would target the Orioles’ All-Star catcher Matt Wieters when he becomes a free agent after the 2014 season.  (Showalter believed his comments were off the record.)

At the same time, The Yankees have gotten little production from their third basemen this year and if A-Rod can still hit, he could help them in their playoff drive. 

Bud Selig wants his legacy to be the commissioner who cleaned up baseball.  That’s a delusion.  Players who cheat and their personal trainers have learned how to mask the indications of human growth hormone and other PEDs in the random urine samples the players union reluctantly agreed to in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement.  

Clearly, the drug testing program instituted under Selig isn’t working.  Cheaters know how to beat it.

The MLB Players Union has long objected to testing, in an ill-advised attempt to protect its players.  The strategy has backfired.  Today all players—especially those having good seasons—are under a cloud of suspicion.  And why not?  If cheaters can’t be caught through testing, why shouldn’t they use PEDs?

The players themselves, who have backed the aggressive stand of their union, are as much to blame as anyone.  Some players now are recognizing the short-sightedness of the union’s long-standing position.  Two Baltimore Orioles players, Chris Davis and Nick Markakis, have voiced frustration over the state of the game, from different perspectives. 

Davis, who has hit 40 home runs this year and driven in more than 100 runs, has heard the speculation—more like the assumption—that he is doping.  He claims never to have cheated but acknowledges that in today’s environment, with cheating so rampant, his accomplishments appear to be tainted.  He’s presumed to be guilty.

Markakis, who has never put up flashy numbers but is a career .287 hitter and gold-glove right fielder, gave an interview that was published in today’s Baltimore Sun saying that the punishments meted out don’t go far enough.  He thinks players who test positive should be banned for at least five years and that afterword should not be allowed to sign contracts for more than one year.  His reasoning is that players who cheated benefited from long-term contracts and should not be able to profit from them in the future.  By the way, Markakis was edged out of the last outfield position in All-Star voting this year by the now-suspended Nelson Cruz.

The other issue for players such as A-Rod and other cheats is their Hall of Fame eligibility.  Baseball is a statistics-driven sport.  Induction into the Hall and the record books is all about the number of home runs hit, earned runs allowed, games played and all the rest.  But there are no rules about who gets in; sports writers vote for who they believe deserve it.  So far, no known cheats, including Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmiero, Roger Clemens and others, have been voted in.  But there’s nothing to say that A-Rod, with his 647 career home runs (fifth on the all-time list and only 13 shy of Willie Mays’ total), won’t get in when he is eligible to be on the ballot.

MLB, the players and their union all have been too slow to implement rigorous testing and severe punishments for cheaters.  If baseball really wants to clean up the game, a new Collective Bargaining Agreement needs to be ratified that:

·      Mandates rigorous, frequent blood-sample testing of players on a par with the International Olympic Committee’s program;

·      Stipulates more severe penalties for first-time and subsequent offenders;

·      Strikes from the record books offenders’ records for the entire season in which they were found out of compliance;

·      Permanently bans offenders from Hall of Fame consideration.

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