Joel Sherman

Joel Sherman

MLB

Shady tactics required to get drugs out of game

The most important issue that should come out of the Alex Rodriguez grievance hearing is not how long his suspension ends up being, but rather how far we want Major League Baseball to go in attempts to curtail use of illegal performance enhancers.

Rodriguez’s theatrics Wednesday assured we are nowhere close to taking a deep breath to examine how we want sports leagues to behave in these instances. He stormed from his hearing, went on radio to proclaim his innocence, used his legal/public relations team’s smart strategy once again to put MLB and Bud Selig on trial in hopes the public might forget he actually is the accused here.

A-Rod has said in the past he never took steroids and it turned out he did, so his public pronouncements should come with warning labels. After all, he told Mike Francesa he relied on Anthony Bosch just for nutritional and dietary expertise, and it wasn’t that long ago Rodriguez was telling us he hardly knew the guy at all. Which is it?

Also, Rodriguez was alluding yesterday Selig hates all things New York, but it wasn’t that long ago his camp was suggesting Selig was in bed with the Yankees to try to remove as much of A-Rod’s contract from the ledger as possible to help the “New York” Yankees. Again, which is it?

We can do this all day: find the before-and-after, the convenient change of tactics and stories to fit a particular narrative. One area from which the A-Rod camp never has deviated is in attempting to expose what it claims are nefarious methods MLB has deployed to snare Rodriguez. I am not sure that is done one iota to actually prove Rodriguez’s innocence — it is one thing to declare someone else guilty, another to show that guilt proves the innocence of the accused.

But, once more, there is a bigger picture here that is being swallowed whole by A-Rod, and that is: Where do you want your friendly sports leagues going to pursue and prosecute these cases?

Because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you want the drugs out of the sport, but that you don’t want the leagues pushing into gray areas to unearth evidence. Take Rodriguez out of this — as difficult as that is — and remember 13 players accepted Biogenesis-related suspensions based on evidence accrued in a way the Rodriguez camp has attacked. Those 13 non-A-Rod players escape without that evidence. Period.

Once these players decided to associate with Bosch, that is who MLB had to try to turn. Father Flanagan was not selling these drugs.

We have learned a few facts the past 20 years, including guilty players are going to deny, deny, deny until they are faced with incontrovertible proof of their guilt — and in the case of someone such as A-Rod, maybe not even that.

The best proof is a failed test, but we constantly are reminded the bad guys are ahead of the good guys, that new substances or masking agents constantly are arriving before ways to detect them. In these scenarios, to prove use, you probably are going to have to turn someone who is part of the supply chain, and that person is not going to be the Kiwanis Man of the Year. It is going to be a lowlife. It is going to be a Radomski or McNamee or Bosch.

Do you want MLB making deals with this ilk? Buying information? Providing protection? Etc.? It is totally legitimate to say, no. Just know it means you will not catch a bunch of users. Jhonny Peralta. Nelson Cruz. Ryan Braun. They were all caught in the Bosch dragnet.

And once you are not trying to turn this type, you likely will empower a group of players that there is less risk of getting caught. Because understand this — testing stops some potential users. But so does fear of the rat.

Players are not chemists. They need a supply chain. That means trusting people they should not. The recent history of the turncoat — such as Bosch — informs players their new friends will sell them out when it is skin-saving time.

The rats only are dangerous to the cheaters if the cheaters believe there is a mechanism to get the rats to help MLB. Again, it is OK to feel MLB should not be paying $125,000 for documents. But that represents one-quarter of the minimum wage in the majors. And for that price — one-quarter of Preston Claiborne — MLB got a trove of information that was key in convincing 13 players to accept a suspension without a fight and convince who knows how many others to either stop using or not start.

It is no easy call. I have great concern about the civil liberties of even asking players for their blood and urine, especially without probable cause. So I definitely am worried about the corruptible possibilities of MLB having its own investigators going into dark alleys. We should have a conversation if we are OK with MLB doing the stuff the Rodriguez crew is accusing it of doing — at least the stuff that is provable or semi-provable.

But we can’t have that conversation until the A-Rod case is resolved, because emotion wins and logic departs when Rodriguez is involved.