Round Up The Usual Suspects

What Spring would be complete without the newest ritual out of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Light. Along with Spring Training and the We're-Not-The-World Baseball Classic, we now have the annual hanging of obscure minor leaguers testing positive for steroid use.

As reported on MLN - The Raw Feed (See Story) five players were suspended for between 50 and 100 games for violating MLB's minor league drug policy.

Karl Gelinas (Angels), Jorge Reyes (Mets), Yonathan Sivira (Cardinals), and Matthew Varner (Padres) all pulled 50 game suspensions. Angel Rocha must have lit up the test like a Christmas tree to pull 100 games.

It should be noted that this is not the major league policy, or the one that applies to the remainder of the major league forty man roster that is placed in the minors. The how of its application, though, we find a bit suspect.

This is the second year of the stricter rules that Selig could unilaterally install, as the MLB Players Association (the PA) does not unionize their minor league brethren.

I'm totally in favor of testing... everyone.

You have to find it a bit interesting that the majority of the players in these proof of the get-tough-on-steroids exercises that we seem to go through each Spring turn out to be middling to low-end players, mostly Hispanics from the DR and Venezuela who would have to work at McDonald's for a couple of years to pop for steroids on their own.

I have yet to see one player who signed with a big fat bonus of $1 million or more get tagged by the steroid police. I guess they're just smarter and cleaner living, like Barry. He managed to go through the MLB dog-and-pony show and never test dirty, even though it is painfully clear that there are many willing to go on the record and say that he was at the time.

There is not one player on any club's hot list fighting for a job either at the major league level or to move up to the next level. Of the people most likely to use steroids to try and get some edge, this would be one of the prime groups. Apparently all those stern warnings from Bud Light and that engaging video that they show the players on intake must be doing the trick.

Blind eye, clueless justice. It's reminiscent of the movie "Casablanca" where Claude Reins' crooked cops round up the "usual suspects," a few well known losers for show even when they know the identity of the real culprits.

Perhaps baseball is still looking away from its problems a bit. Steroids were the dirty secret in the closet that no one wanted to deal with, because ultimately they were pumping up the game in ways that were putting fan butts back in seats. They were keeping profits strong, contracts fat and the agents and managers and attorneys and other leeches that attach themselves to rising players fat too. Everyone wins, except the widow and children of the poor schlub or two who keel over dead trying to keep up with the amped-up Jonses.

No one seems to ever ask the tougher questions like: How do some of these kids, who barely make enough in Rookie or A ball or even AA, buy advanced steroids that hypothetically will be new enough to beat the test? Is someone popping for them? If so who?

There is an altogether too cynical conspiracy theory that I've heard floating around the Grapefruit League this Spring: Like the wolf praying on the sheep, a few of the slower and less able are selected for this special treatment. Oh, say it isn't so!

If these are the only five guys in the minors using steroids, you should run down to the corner bodega and grab your Lotto ticket: The laws of probability have been suspended and everyone will be a winner next Friday night.

Then there's the actual suspension itself. Who came up with these numbers? 50 games. 100 games! Ban them for half the season, the whole season. It has more impact, and it's easier to fix how long they will deprive the team of their services. Not that many of the chuckleheads on the list for the past two years will get missed much.

If the Commish really wants to get rid of steroids, hit the team with a half-season suspension of the player and his roster spot. You'd see trainers turning into Robocop overnight.

Clubs don't police because they don't have to do it. They pass the buck to the league, which is so removed from what goes on with the player in and out of the locker room that they can never really know.

If you're going to serve up smelt rather than the big fish, there's going to be a certain stink to the whole affair.