By STAN McNEAL
Even while Major League Baseball and the players union were being applauded for implementing in-season HGH testing three weeks ago, some experts on drug testing were guarded in their praise.
To paraphrase their take on MLB?s revised Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program: slightly better but still full of loopholes.
Such skepticism is easy to understand after reading the Miami New Times? story on what can be called the South Florida BALCO. Even if the allegations against the seven major leaguers implicated in the piece turn out to be false, there remains enough of a performance-enhancing, drug-taking mess to believe baseball isn?t as clean as commissioner Bud Selig wants us to think it is.
As we near the end of a month when the game?s biggest news continued to center on steroids, I am convinced only one step possibly can rid baseball of its PED problem: a lifetime ban for the first positive test.
Simple as that. You test positive, you?re done.
No more million-dollar contracts for you. Your contract is voided (and, really, you should have to pay back what you?ve already made) and you?re out.
Today?s rules call for a 50-game ban for the first positive test, a 100-game ban for the second and a lifetime ban for a third. Although such punishment is more than a slap on the wrist, clearly it isn?t enough to stop players from cheating.
Look no further than Melky Cabrera to see why. His 50-game suspension hardly had ended before the Toronto Blue Jays handed him a two-year, $16 million contract. After signing for $6 million in 2012, Cabrera essentially was given a $10 million raise. I would have to consider taking such a risk for that kind of reward, too.
Toughening the penalties for PED use rests squarely on the players union. Considering where the game was 10 years ago, perhaps the union is trending toward tougher measures. Even with the loopholes, baseball?s drug-testing policy has become the toughest in professional sports.
But tougher testing isn?t enough. Tougher penalties are needed.
I would hope that clean players would agree. If drug testing has cleaned up the game as much as many believe it has, clean players must outnumber the PED users by an overwhelming majority. If players are so worried about a false positive resulting in a lifetime ban, strengthen the appeals process to ensure the innocent are even better protected.
What other reason can the clean players have for not wanting to rid their profession of cheaters?
When the Blue Jays signed Cabrera, general manager Alex Anthopoulos said he was in favor of giving players a second ? but not a third ? chance. Sure, that is the American and Canadian way.
But in baseball, the second-chance system isn?t enough.
To move past this problem, it is time to adopt a ?one strike and you?re out? policy.
Source: http://www.masslive.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/01/columnist_baseball_must_adopt.html
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