Will MLB take the necessary steps with PEDs?
Jun 5, 2013, 5:43 PM | Updated: Jun 6, 2013, 1:17 pm
By Michael Grey
How clean do you want to be?
In the wake of the latest PED scandal involving A-Rod, Ryan Braun and allegedly Seattle’s own Jesus Montero, MLB has some serious soul searching to do.
 Bud Selig |
How clean does Major League Baseball want to be? Commissioner Bud Selig will tell you, repeatedly, that MLB needs a stronger drug testing policy and that he is in favor of doing whatever it takes to accomplish that.
Unfortunately, that is where the real talk stops and the ether begins. It’s not a secret that the steroid era of baseball, while now considered a black mark on the history of the game, was a boon to the sport. A lot of folks in the league knew what was going on, knew it was helping the sport and chose to do what was right … for TV ratings.
That time in the game created the culture that you have today and it’s obviously not under control. So what is MLB to do? Will it actually take the harsh steps necessary to drum PEDs out of the game? Will we live to see the Major Leagues ex-communicating its star players when they are found to have violated? Will it send a clear message that the upside of cheating is nowhere near as bad as what waits for you on the other side of a dirty test?
Or will they continue to rattle the sabre while players like Melky Cabrera, who are caught cheating, get a deal worth $16 million or more the very next season? For what it’s worth, Cabrera feels just terrible about cheating, though I am guessing not bad enough to give any of that money back.
Of course no player would (or should) offer up his salary back. They are simply playing within the rules and policies of the day in MLB, and until those change, nothing else will.
The question is whether or not MLB really wants to clean up baseball at the risk of eliminating some of its most popular players or if it would rather continue to stumble forward from scandal to scandal simply treading water in a sea of excuses.
