Baseball is being Drug through the Drug tests

Fryingpan Sports

Baseball is being Drug through the Drug tests

By Bill Smith

Commissioner Bud Selig is visiting the taro card reader again. This time he wants to know what he should do about the players that were caught on the 2003 test. Some leaks (beside the names of players on the list) have been coming out of the commissioner’s office about possible actions. These trial balloons have been floating around the Internet and talk radio to see what the public reaction would be.

Selig had to stand in line at the fortune teller’s door because she was in with ARod. He wanted to know what he could do to get past the steroid problem and get back to baseball.

Here are some of the alternatives being floated by Selig:

  1. Suspend ARod and anyone else on the 2003 list for the 50 game step 1 of the policy.

    Not so fast. The test was taken BEFORE there was a policy. The results were supposed to be kept confidential. They leaked out and the league and the union are responsible.

    My advice: Forget suspensions for the 104 on the list. That would violate the word of the league—not that it has been worth much up to now.

  2. Change the rules for ARod and the rest of the 104 to suspend them for a year for any violation of the policy in the future.

    Well, evidently the rules don’t mean much if we change them every time the league and the Commish get embarrassed. If that was the plan, the rule writers would be busier than the historians in the USSR that had to totally rewrite history every time there was a change of leadership. Does the phrase “terminal writer’s cramp” mean anything to us?

    My advice: Forget changing the rules. The purpose of rules is that they apply to everyone all the time. They can’t be enacted retroactively to make the Commish look less like a fraud.

  3. Forget the test and hope that players named don’t sue the league and union for every cent those organizations will ever touch.

    This might sound good to Selig but the story won’t go away no matter how much dirt the league may throw on the players. The fans won’t buy that because it doesn’t pass the smell test.

My advice: Put everyone on the list on a double schedule for testing in the future and they will be subject to the same policy as everyone else. That punishes the violators for their use and provides more proof more often that they are clean now. THAT is the only choice the league has. What do you want to bet they do something else?

That’s what I think. Tell me what you think.

Bill Smith is a former coach of several semi-pro teams, has officiated both football and basketball, done color on radio for college football and basketball and has scouted talent. He is a senior writer for and edits https://fryingpansports.com. He has also published several novels on and edits .

My email is [email protected].

No votes yet.
Please wait...