![]() ![]() The game's new position is similar to that of USADA, WADA and the Olympics. If baseball officials think they have enough information without a positive test, they have the power to suspend a player for a full season or more. That a player did not fail a drug test - a point used by fans to criticize media coverage of suspected PED users from Lance Armstrong to Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens to, especially, Mark McGwire - now means nothing. The true power of the game, in this context, is now in the nonanalytic leeway the Joint Drug Agreement provides baseball, empowering its investigative unit to be very aggressive. The league's relatively new investigative arm did. The rhetoric of the Rodriguez suspension as proof of the efficacy of the league's testing program is just public relations hocus-pocus, for the testing program did not catch Rodriguez. By extension, that means it is the biggest hammer ownership has had over the union in decades. ![]() The Biogenesis saga makes one thing clear: MLB's investigative unit is the biggest hammer the league has had during the steroid era. ![]() But it is hardly good policy for a sport to take down its players and then dance in the end zone on "60 Minutes" immediately thereafter. Baseball and its players and its standing and its Hall of Fame have all been diminished by the steroid era, no question. The game does not necessarily look better for its zeal, and in many ways it looks worse. It is certainly a Pyrrhic victory, though, because when Rodriguez dragged baseball into this street fight, it lowered its standards and employed the very behaviors it says it is trying to discourage in its players. The arbitrator decided he must go away "only" for all of the 2014 season instead of the 211 games originally levied by baseball, but the outcome is being hailed as a win for MLB. Rodriguez alone chose to see the process through to the end, and he paid dearly. It was achieved with checkbook justice (paying for the stolen documents it used as evidence against Rodriguez and later punishing Rodriguez for attempting to use the very same tactics), with intimidation (suing the "key witness," Tony Bosch, to persuade him to work with baseball to finish Rodriguez) and with muscle (cornering Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta, Everth Cabrera and other Biogenesis suspects into accepting suspensions rather than risk greater sanctions by pursuing their rights to defend themselves to the fullest). Major League Baseball's investigative unit, the one concrete result of the 2007 Mitchell report, won its greatest victory yet in its takedown of Alex Rodriguez and the rest of the players associated with Biogenesis. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser ![]()
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