Dee Gordon is the villain in his 80-game suspension. Let’s be upfront about that because I want to talk about the hypocrisy that cushions a villain and propels a villain to do villainous stuff.
Pretty much the only institution in the game that has delivered a strong penalty to those tied to illegal performance enhancers is the Baseball Writers Association of America, which votes for the Hall of Fame. Hypocrisy alert: I might be part of the problem, because I vote for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
Ultimately, the Hall is about the best 1 percent of players ever. For the other 99 percent, the deterrent message is not exactly powerful, certainly not as powerful as the hypocrisy.
Let’s start with the fans. I hear the moaning all the time about what we will tell the children. But when Gordon returns later this season, he is going to get a big ovation in Miami. You know how I know that?
Because Bonds was cheered in San Francisco and Mark McGwire in St. Louis and Alex Rodriguez in New York. The bad guys all play on the other teams, not yours. If your cheater helps your team win, you are just fine with it. No one is saying you should boo. But do you have to cheer? Is your morality really based on what uniform a man wears?
And what of the players? More are speaking up than ever before. But Twitter is not the best repository for outrage. There is a new collective bargaining agreement being negotiated now. One side in the negotiation is the Players Association. In case that is not clear, that is the association of the players. It is their union. If they want tougher penalties, demand that of union head Tony Clark. If you want players to forfeit their contracts if caught, then demand that, as well.
The players, though, are mostly like the fans: They hate everyone else’s cheaters, but not the good guys they know personally in their own clubhouse. When Toronto’s Chris Colabello was nabbed, his teammate, Kevin Pillar, railed about how the system needed to be fixed because no way Colabello could have cheated. It was his friend, not some abstract guy from another team.
Colabello talked about how he loved the game and would never dishonor it. That is a common refrain of the scoundrels now, right there with: “I have no idea how it got into my body.” Well, if any of these guys really loved the game, they would tell MLB investigators where they are getting it. Then, at least one venue would be shut down and some better ideas of how the cheaters are cheating would be given to the good guys, so the cops would not always be so far behind the villains.
The teams do not get off the hook here, either. They also wail about having to pay guys who have cheated — for example, Gordon will lose about $1.5 million during his suspension, but will get the bulk of the $50 million contract he signed last offseason. But the teams — like the fans and players — only are interested in what is good for them.
So Nelson Cruz gets a multi-year contract even though he was suspended for association with PEDs, as did Jhonny Peralta and Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon. You could say they did their time and were again members in good standing in the game. True. But what are you telling future cheaters about penalties if you give past cheaters guaranteed multi-year contracts? Or if you swing open the door to have Bonds and McGwire and Manny Ramirez work with your players as coaches? Or if A-Rod is the most prominent person in all your advertising?
And the Commissioner’s Office does not skate here, either. The human body just was not meant to jam 162 games in 183 days across different time zones with day games after night games. The Cardinals, for example, played a night game in Arizona on Thursday, lost an hour coming home to play the Nationals in St. Louis on Friday night then have a day game Saturday.
Torturous schedules like that are going to motivate some percentage of players to find chemicals that will aid in recovery. Gordon, after all, does not fit the mode of the swelled bodybuilder masquerading as a baseball player. It was a reminder that players of all shapes and sizes take PEDs for all different reasons.
One of those reasons could be diminished if more off-days were created by reducing the schedule to 154 or 148 games and/or having the season begin a week earlier. But that would mean less money for owners and players, and no one has seemed to have the appetite for that.
Instead, we continue with very loud condemnations — and loads of more subtle, hypocrisy-filled messages that suggest the drug risk is worth it. If you get caught, just say you had no idea how it got into your system, you are sorry to fans, teammates and the game, do your time, return to a nice ovation from the home folks and a warm greeting from teammates and team.
How exactly does this crime not pay?