Will angry players push for tougher PED penalties after the latest suspensions?
Harsher penalties are coming -- a fierce debate over harsher penalties, at the very least.
Some prominent players, in a story I wrote for FOX Sports a little more than a week ago, expressed frustration that users of performance-enhancing drugs occasionally escape detection. A number of the players who spoke out added that they were open to more stringent discipline for those who intentionally violated baseball's Joint Drug Agreement.
Since then, baseball has announced 80-game PED suspensions for two well-liked players with appealing back stories -- Blue Jays first baseman Chris Colabello and Marlins All-Star second baseman Dee Gordon.
The suspensions demonstrate that baseball's testing program -- widely regarded as the toughest in major professional team sports -- is catching some players who cheat. But Nationals right-hander Max Scherzer referred to the enduring mystery of PED use in baseball as "a dark cloud within the game." And Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area laboratory that supplied PEDS to some of the world's greatest athletes, recently told USA Today, "If you're smart, you'll never get caught."
The commissioner's office released the news of Gordon's suspension -- he tested positive for two substances, exogenous Testosterone and Clostebol -- in an email at 1:17 a.m. ET on Friday. The odd timing stemmed from Gordon abruptly dropping his appeal and wanting to tell his teammates what had happened, according to Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports.
Gordon had just gone 1-for-4 with an RBI and scored on a seventh-inning balk in the Marlins' 5-3 victory over the Dodgers. The sequence of events prompted Tigers right-hander Justin Verlander, one of the players quoted in my story last week, to tweet:
"This PED (expletive) is killing me. If u test positive u need to not play. You shouldn't be allowed to effect games."
Verlander has a point, but the JDA allows for alleged users to play during their appeals, and rightly so. The process is confidential; if an arbitrator rules that a player is wrongly accused, the charge against the player will remain private, and he will not be unfairly tagged as a user.
Often players under such scrutiny struggle to perform -- Colabello was batting .069 at the time of his suspension and Gordon .266, down significantly from his .333 mark last season when he became the first National League player to win the batting title and lead his league in stolen bases since Jackie Robinson in 1949.
Did Gordon do all that cleanly? Who knows?
His ascent after getting traded from the Dodgers to the Marlins the previous offseason was compelling -- I had written the previous spring that perhaps he was a late bloomer, perhaps the Dodgers had given up on him too soon.
Both Colabello and Gordon are warm, engaging figures, popular with their teammates and reporters. Some will want to believe that they somehow are innocent, or simply committed a one-time mistake. But the shame of the PED era -- an era that continues, even with testing -- is that you don't know whom to trust.
Colabello does not deny that a PED was in his system, but says that he does not know how or why he tested positive, suggesting that his use was inadvertent. Gordon, according to USA Today, issued a statement saying that while he did not knowingly take a banned substance, he made a mistake and accepts the consequences.
Their back-to-back suspensions should only fortify the resolves of players who believe that even the current penalties -- an 80-game ban for a first offense, 162 games for a second, a lifetime ban for a third -- are not harsh enough.
"If there is proven intent to cheat -- i.e. you tested positive or it's found that you were taking an illegal substance, PEDs, and trying to cheat the system, trying to go around it -- I think it should be a ban from baseball," Verlander told FOX Sports.
"It's too easy for guys to serve a suspension and come back and still get paid."
Said Cardinals left fielder Matt Holliday: "I'm all for second chances. But if you make the penalty super, super stiff, guys will think twice. They'll look at 80 games and think, 'That's not that big a deal.' But if you start taking away two years, that's a lot of money. That might be different."
Gordon, who recently turned 28, signed a five-year, $50 million extension on Jan. 14. He will forfeit approximately $1.31 million of his $3 million salary while serving his suspension, but the rest of the contract will remain his, enabling him to effectively take money that otherwise could go to players who remain clean.
Therein lies the rub.
The question, with the collective bargaining agreement expiring Dec. 1, is whether enough players are angry enough to press their union into accepting the voiding of multi-year deals for those who are suspended for PEDs.
The players, in the words of union chief Tony Clark, "have shown an unprecedented willingness to negotiate significant mid-term amendments to the program." But, Clark added, "they also care deeply about due process and fundamental fairness."
Just two years ago, the players agreed to prevent those who are suspended for PEDs from participating in the postseason or receiving a full share of the players' pool of postseason revenue.
It's difficult to imagine the union ever agreeing to the voiding of a negotiated multi-year contract. But 15 years ago, it was difficult to imagine the union ever agreeing to drug testing.
Times change. Circumstances change. And the problem is not going away.
Chris Colabello
