Results tagged ‘ cheat ’
The players are not happy with the Braun decision
From Craig Calcaterra @ Hardball Talk comes news that quite a few MLB players have privately informed ESPN‘s Buster Olney that they are not the least bit happy with Ryan Braun’s OJ act:
Players are not happy with the Ryan braun result.
At least the ones Buster Olney has spoken to. He reports that he has spoken with dozens and dozens of ballplayers off the record in the past week, and that as many as 80-90% of them are upset at the Braun decision. They don’t like that he challenged procedure as opposed to substance, and they think it’s bad for the testing program overall, which they sincerely want to work.
I understand that. And I think it’s a good thing for drug testing in baseball overall that there are people who are upset at it. Like I said yesterday, systems are improved over time when blips and inefficiencies occur. The Braun decision may seem unjust on some level, but its lasting legacy will not be about what it means for Braun, it will be about how, when faced with a problem in the system, the league and the union can work together to address it. Which I am certain they will here, either by clarifying the collection procedures to their people in the field or by changing the Joint Drug Agreement to conform to the practices those in the field have employed and to apply them going forward.
All of that said, complaints that the Braun decision somehow puts testing at risk is silly. Braun walking on this charge is no more of a threat to the drug testing system than a guy getting off on a burglary charge because the cops didn’t get a proper search warrant is a threat to the criminal justice system. You may hate the result, but the remedy is easy: get it right next time or change the rules to make what happened in that instance acceptable. It is not something that puts the entire regime in peril.
Finally, I’ll observe that these complaints all seem a little self-righteous to me. No one who ever wins on a procedural argument themselves ever seems to have a problem with it. And I suspect that the 80-90% of the players Olney spoke with here were under the gun themselves, they would not hesitate to make the same arguments Braun did if they or their legal advisors thought to do so.
I really hope this is true., but from my own experience on the matter I see that 80-90% number as a pipe dream. I happened to be on Twitter when news of the appeal being upheld broke and every single comment I saw from dozens of MLBers was along the lines of “he’s vindicated”, “his name is cleared” or “#suckonthatdoubters”.
Every last one.
I even got into an exchange, a civil one mind you, with Gaby Sanchez of the Miami Marlins on the merits of getting off “on a technicality” in such a case. Let’s just say we “agreed to disagree” in the end.
But like I said. I really hope the players do get it. The dude’s a cheat. He was juiced up twice as much as Floyd Landis was when he had his Tour de France titled stripped away and dodged a bullet on a very, very questionable technicality.
Let He That Has Not Sinned…Steroids Accountability Lies With All of Us
For the first time in his life Arod has had to go "off-script".
As the dust continues to swirl around the “A-Roid” issue in Major League Baseball, I continue to sit back and marvel at the sheer hypocrisy that is flooding airwaves and bulletin boards alike.
One by one, writers, fans, major league baseball executives, and even, laughably, owners (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Tom Hicks) have all lined up to take their pot shots at the ever-growing list of major league baseball players that have been found out to be “cheats.”
Now make absolutely no mistake about this: I cry for the game. I truly do.
All of my friends only “kind of laugh” when they hear me use my all too familiar line, “Baseball isn’t a sport to me; it’s a religion.” Thus it saddens me to see my beloved pastime suffer from yet another self-induced blow of the performance-enhancing drug variety.
That being said, nothing gets me more irritated than this “holier than thou” attitude that is being dumped on the players involved in this whole fiasco.
I am sick and tired of these so-called “moralists” acting outraged at the fact that these players could do such a thing. Everyone under the sun is just piling on these guys like they are the vilest of the vile, insulting our sensibilities at each and every turn.
What's that? Steroids? Never heard of 'em.
To them I say, “Where were you when all of this was going on?”
Where were you, mister commissioner, when you presided over the dirtiest era the sport has ever seen? You were busy patting yourself on the back as revenues exploded like balls off of Barry Bonds’ bat, that’s where.
And where were you, Major League Baseball Players Union chair Donald Fehr? You were too consumed with protecting the players that were juiced up, as their ill-gotten productivity was driving up revenues that you could secure in your collective bargaining agreements.
Where were you, the fans, as record after record fell at a meteoric rate? As prodigious home run after home run left the bat of players like McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and Rodriguez, did you once speak out in protest of what should have been all too obvious?
Even now as we mire through this never-ending saga of dishonesty and betrayal, why did it take an economic recession the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the late ’20s to finally drive down ticket sales?
Throw in a lack of accountability too!
And lastly, where were you, “Mister/Ms. Sportswriter” (and yes, my finger is pointed squarely at myself as I type this), while all of this was going on? Was it not you that was closest to all of this without actually being on the inside? Were you not there, day after day, chronicling all of this without so much as a peep about PEDs?
Who had greater access to the game, its players, its owners, and all of its “dirty little secrets” than you? Yet, save a handful of cries that went completely ignored, not a word was said about what from all accounts was “a culture that was prevalent throughout all of major league baseball.”
Yet here we are, all of us looking down our noses at the players involved, chastising them as cheats, narcissists, and greed-fueled monsters devoid of any morally redeeming value.
We were all partners in this crime that has tarnished our wonderful game.
This looks oddly familiar to the late 90's.
MLB executives, the players union, and owners that did absolutely nothing to stop this; players that not only used the PEDs but those that turned a blind eye to what was obviously going on; fans that uttered every “ooh” and “ah” at the towering home runs that dominated the landscape of the era; and yes, the so-called “journalists” that somehow couldn’t figure out what was going on right under their very noses.
Alex Rodriguez and others should indeed be held accountable in the court of public opinion for what they have done.
But then again, shouldn’t we all?
