So I was working happily on a Michael Bourn blog post yesterday morning when the news hit. Hence, no blog post yesterday. Also hence, we’re talking about A-Rod today.
Let’s break it down.
1. There’s always – always – a rush to judgment when one of these stories breaks. Moral judgments. Legal judgments. Ultra-confident proclamations on what this all means.
Do we ever learn? Have we not been burned enough times on stuff like this?
Patience.
2. Well, unless you’re shocked and saddened by this latest development, by the mere fact that this report even exists. If that’s the case, please allow me to grab you by the lapels, shake you and scream, “What is wrong with you?!”
Have you not been paying attention to the world, to our species, for…your entire life?
If you buy into the idea of our sports being “pure,” if you believe the notion of statistical integrity, then that’s on you. You’re not getting it.
We have to stop viewing professional sports through a guilty/not guilty prism when it comes to illegal PEDs and switch to a caught/not caught prism. That doesn’t mean we should presume universal guilt. It means that we simply should stop worrying about it. Stop wringing our hands over it.
To wish for a perfectly “clean” playing field is to strive for an impossible goal. It simply will never happen, no matter how much we increase the frequency and toughness of testing, increase the penalties or increase the social pressure of getting caught.
Athletes always will work to find a competitive edge. There could be far worse things. There have been far worse things – like racial segregation, the Black Sox scandal and Pete Rose.
3. OK, time to step down from the stage of arrogance and tackle some of the specific issues at play here. First, what do we actually have here? As of now, we have a terrific newspaper story that isn’t much of a prosecutorial case. We have a notebook with someone writing, “I sold drugs to A-Rod and a bunch of other guys.”
It’s going to take considerably more than that to bring down A-Rod and his pals. For starters, Anthony Bosch would have to confirm that yes, he did write that and yes, he did sell those drugs to those people. Then he’d have to provide additional evidence that these actions occurred. Canceled checks? Prescription slips? Photos of A-Rod? It’s got to be something good.
Maybe Bosch can pull that off, and maybe A-Rod actually would be suspended due to a non-analytic positive. It isn’t impossible. It’s a long way away, though, and A-Rod’s hiring of Roy Black and strong denial yesterday indicate that he’s going to fight this passionately. Which means that this is going to be a very fun story.
4. As for voiding A-Rod’s contract…gosh, that’s a major long shot. The Yankees’ best shot at getting out of some or all of their remaining five years and $114 million is a plot that goes essentially like this:
A-Rod’s rehab from hip surgery doesn’t go as well as hoped, and faced with a suspension, he pulls a Manny Ramirez a la 2011 and just retires.
More likely, given that A-Rod is unlikely to simply hand back all of that money, is that the two sides negotiate a buyout. But most likely is that A-Rod still winds up getting every penny of what he is owed, whether from the Yankees or from an insurance company.
In any case, if we’re talking about what’s a greater threat to A-Rod’s career, his health or his extracurricular activities, you go with his health.
5. For those of you complaining that A-Rod could serve his theoretical suspension while on the disabled list, the point is that 1) He wouldn’t be allowed to play; and 2) he wouldn’t get paid. His physical condition is moot.
6. As for what this means for baseball…pretty much nothing. MLB folks felt heartened that three of the players named – Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal – already have been caught and suspended, and that they already have been working on the South Florida issue.
Since MLB’s Department of Investigations has no juice (put intended) in the real world, its best strategy is to suck up to law-enforcement officials and appeal to those folks’ inner jock-sniffers, as George Mitchell successfully did with his infamous 2007 report. That strategy is apparently being deployed.
So is this case a blight on baseball? Only if you’re one of those people mentioned above in Point 2. If you’re a realist, then you’d have to think that MLB is doing pretty well on this front.
–Have a great day.