Baseball Needs To Get Serious About 'Roids

By: Eric Thomas

A fifty game suspension for Melky Cabrera is a joke. The joke starts out like this: Baseball takes the steroid problem seriously. Then you fall down and roll around, hyena like, until you wheeze and spit yourself into a tuberculosis coma.

Fifty games, does that really get anyone's' attention? Never mind the fact that the steroid era is still fresh in the minds of most fans. Never mind the fact that last year's NL MVP tested positive. Never mind the fact that Mark McGuire is the size of Woody Allen and teaches Cardinals how to hit. Never mind that sports most precious records have rendered abrogate. If the only cost that Melky Cabrera must pay is fifty games, why wouldn't every player do the same? In the coverage that has leaked out since the news, it seems that the only thing Melky regrets is that he got caught.

I guess it's refreshing. When Melky simply shrugs and admits that he cheated, knowingly, it is a blast of oxygen that strikes me as more mature than the Ryan Braun temper tantrum. His response is forthright, but chilling nonetheless. He cheated, knowing full well that he was cheating as he did it. All he gets is fifty games? Why wouldn't every player juice? All you get is fifty games!

Pete Rose must sit outside the gates. He must remain in purgatory, hanging his shamed and poor haircut-ed head. The reason for his exile is because he harmed the integrity of the game. He was cast out, permanently. The punishment so large and luminous that none has since dared to tread. Baseball sent a message, etched deeply. Players and coaches know well that the consequences are dire. One of the greatest players of all time has been erased. Because he might have harmed one of the games that he was involved in. Lifetime ban.

So why do we look at the steroid situation differently? Why isn't it a lifetime ban for those who test positive? Bonds, McGuire, A-Rod and Pudge are gonna have to sit outside the gate for a while, but it won't be a lifetime. It's not a message that the league sent to discourage future behavior. This is an after the fact punishment. This is what you get for deceiving the public. A small waiting period and then your former glory have been fully restored.

The damage done to the game is permanent. Hank Aaron's home run record was legendary. It's gone now, erased. It was erased by a player who had a ghostwriter. It cheapened the record. It wasn't one man against a series of frustrated pitchers. It was one man, underwritten by his chemist. Forged by Pheravol. Helped by H-Drol. Dinger by Dymethazine. These players knew full well what they were doing, just like Pete Rose did. Their deeds hang in the hall like a miasma, rendering everything around them clouded in gauzy white.

Baseball needs to get tough. They need to make a statement. This has happened in consecutive years and baseball needs to close the door. They need to make an effort to get this stuff out of the game, and the only way to do it is to treat it like the aberration that it is. Without the Pete Rose treatment, the fines and suspensions handed out to players using steroids will look like wrist taps by comparison.

Soon the records in baseball will be as laughable and unbelievable as the East German swim team. Do they really want that?