ADD DESTROYING CRIMINAL EVIDENCE TO A-ROD’S RAP LIST?

On Friday afternoon, Michael Schmidt of the New York Times broke the story and identified Alex Rodriguez as the player who allegedly purchased documents from a former employee of Biogenesis of America in an attempt to destroy evidence linking him to the anti-aging clinic’s distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.

When the Miami New Times broke the story in January, I remember saying “this is the White Whale. This is the one that will blow the lid completely off the entire steroid and PED scandal.”

Since that day more than a dozen players have been implicated and tied to Biogensis including Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Bartolo Colon, Nelson Cruz and Yasmani Grandal and 2012 MVP Ryan Braun.

While they all continue denying everything and scrambling for and convenient excuse they can find, the plot keeps thickening and the sordid details are piling up by the hundreds. Real details and real documents that even MLB themselves are trying to illegally buy at any price to get to the bottom of this and protect what little integrity the game has left.

The person charged with the role of Super Spy is none other than Bud Selig himself who has been authorizing and signing off on huge sums of cash that is being used to secure whatever documents they can get their hands on from former employees of the lab who are now all seeking to pay off their significant mounting legal fees.

And while Alex Rodriguez is no less guilty of doing the same thing, there is a huge difference.

MLB wants those documents so they can go after every player that is implicated and try to clean up the game.

A-Rod on the other hand, was seeking to get those documents and destroy them before the FBI or MLB got a hold of them.

But wait, there’s more…

Of course, Rodriguez flatly denied the accusation through a spokesman, but then he dropped another bombshell alleging that it was the New York Yankees that were paying for and buying those documents from the rogue former employee. Wow…

Oh and one more thing… Let’s stop calling them documents and lets start referring to them instead as illegally obtained evidence to hinder an ongoing federal, state and MLB investigation.

These are all allegations at this time, but when this is all over, I think more than a few people, including players, will be looking at life from a different perspective…

Major League Baseball has Ryan Braun in their cross-hairs and are going to great lengths to nab him says Bob Nightengale of USA Today. They have contacted his friends and family, those he has done business with; anyone he is connected to. However according to this report, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are names of over 90 baseball players who were found in the records of the Biogenesis Clinic, and MLB could use any one of them to find out information on the clinic and even more importantly for them; Braun. Nightengale goes on to give startling detail of how MLB plans to go after the Brewer’s franchise player.

These players will have no choice but to talk to MLB officials. If they don’t cooperate, MLB can suspend them, according to the bylaws of the collective bargaining agreement.

In some cases, according to two officials who spoke to USA TODAY Sports but were unauthorized to speak publicly, some players will be granted immunity even if they admit guilt to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. They would have to fully disclose their arrangement with Tony Bosch, former director of the now-shuttered Biogenesis clinic, including any possible involvement by their agents or knowledge of other players who received performance-enhancing drugs from him.

MLB vice president Rob Manfred told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today however that every player is being investigated with “equal vigor”.

I think Nightengale’s report shows just how much MLB want to prove Braun the cheat he should have been proclaimed one year ago. The fact that they are potentially willing to pardon other players to bring him down speaks volumes. He flat out embarrassed Major League Baseball last year when he became the first player to overturn a positive test on a technicality, so much so that they fired the the arbitrator, Shyam Das, who ruled in the disgraced all-star’s favor.

They want to take him down, and they want it bad. MLB is the watchdog and prosecutor when it comes to steroids, so it is in their power to pardon/suspend players in order to take down a larger evil. However, my question is, is it right of them to do so? It’s a fine line.

They dished out a 100-game suspension to minor leaguer Cesar Carillo like nothing. I can only imagine what they have in store for Braun if they find enough evidence to act on him.

I’d expect a lot of he said/she said coming up in the near future:

Let that marinate for a second.

I don’t remember who the player was, but I certainly believe that stat to be fairly accurate. It always made me wonder why PED or steroid usage causes such an uproar if it was as common as using tobacco before a ball game. A player could get arrested for being caught with some of the drugs they were using, but there were no written rule in baseball which stated a player couldn’t use them.

For that simple fact, baseball should just build a wing in the Hall of Fame and label it the “Steroid Era.” Baseball should not run away from it’s past, but accept it, and be proud that they took steps to try and right the wrongs.

I know some people will disagree. They want these men banned because the cheated! They want their names removed from the record books! They don’t deserve it!

These same people that proclaim these things are rule breakers themselves. They are law breakers. Not only do they break laws, but their law breaking could have a bigger impact on their lives and the lives of others than the men that used PEDs during baseball.

How many of you commute to work everyday? How many of you drive in and stay at, or below the speed limit? I’m going to go out on a limb and say not many. It’s a rule of the road and a law that is easy for us to ignore. We ignore it for a variety of reasons. Some people can’t afford to be late, and fear of losing their jobs. Others just like driving fast. Regardless of the reason we break the law; the law is there for the safety of ourselves and the other people on the road. We do it because the odds of us getting caught are slim.

However, when we speed on the road and take our lives and the other people’s lives for granted around us, it’s not looked on as harshly as a man that took MLBs sacred records for granted. Not unless we get caught, and not unless something bad happens. Then the speeding person’s name is often on the cover of your local newspaper and looked on as a villain.

The same holds true when it came to PEDs, which brings me to the next point.

Why is it that we ridicule the player who was a superstar, when suspicions of PED usage arise, but the fringe major league player and middle of the road players get a free pass?

Nobody gives a rat’s ass about how PED use of these fringe players affected the game of baseball, all that is cared about is the sacred records. What a crock of crap. Has it ever dawned on anyone that these great players were already great, and while the may have used PEDs, would probably have been hall of famers to begin with?

The truly forgotten player in this mess is the player that never lived out his dream. The clean player that tried to stay on the straight and narrow and never even thought to use a PED to gain an edge. These men were robbed of their dreams, often good enough on god given talent to play professional baseball, but often overlooked because scouts marveled at the guy who was juicing.

I’ve had a few friends who played minor league and independent league baseball who would attest to seeing the other players rubbing the “cream” on in the club house. I, with my own eyes, have seen friends helping inject each other with a syringe of steroids.

It was literally everywhere.

How many young lives were ruined because young men were trying to imitate their heroes? How many young lives lost? How many dreams crushed?

I never for a second thought my heroes were ever using steroids. Not that it would have made a difference in what I was doing if I knew that they were. Call me naïve, but I really thought it was Creatine and other over the counter supplements these players were using. If you didn’t find me in a gym lifting weights, I was probably at GNC re-stocking my supplement stash.

I was a player dead-smack in the middle of the steroid era. I was a victim of the steroid era. My story is probably not much different than others. I’m sure thousands of former aspiring baseball players can tell you similar stories. As an aspiring player, I began using Creatine in an attempt to build huge bulging muscles to catch the eyes of the scouts. The result: between my sophomore and junior year in college I gained almost 20 pounds.

A funny thing happens when you gain 20 pounds in a course of two months when you aren’t using performance enhancers—you get slow as heck. I went from a guy who had the green light on the base paths the two previous years with the nickname of “Jackie” (after Jackie Robinson for my aggressive base running style and the way I wore my uniform), to a guy that should have been utilized as a designated hitter. I went from scoring from second base on passed balls to the back stop, to having someone come in to pinch run for me in certain game situations. I wasn’t fat, just didn’t realize what gaining the extra muscle weight was doing to me and my game.

It’s the year 2001. I am one year removed from college and skipped over in the major league draft, knocking around to different tryouts. I had gotten a full-time job at a prominent company right out of college, but I still had the itch to play professional baseball. I remember getting myself in the best shape of my life (naturally) and decided that a tryout I was going to attend for the Cincinnati Reds would be my last hurrah. Unless I got signed, I was walking away from the game. I would leave it all on the field. It was time to move on with my life.

I won’t bore you with the details of the tryout, but I was invited with two other young aspiring ball players to stay after the tryout. We were pulled into the dugout when everyone else had vacated the field. The Reds scout walked over to us, he began to speak, and I will never forget what he said. He looked at us and said “you three guys are good enough to play in the Cincinnati Reds organization right now. The problem is I can’t sign any of you, although I would like to, because then we would have to release an established player that we have already invested time and money in. However, I can have you placed on an independent team, and if a spot opens up in our organization or a player gets injured, we can give you a call.”

I heard all I had to hear. I was happy I heard the words that I was good enough to play in the organization. I walked up to the scout, shook his hand, and thanked him for the opportunity. I walked off the field for what I thought was going to be the last time in my life. I had closure. At least I thought I did.

Fast forward a few years to all the steroid allegations. All these men I looked up to growing up are now being accused of using steroids. I’m hearing that ninety percent of ball players were on some sort of steroid or PED. The closure I thought I had slowly started drifting away. The closure began to turn to anger. I started to question if the reason why I didn’t get a chance to live my dream was because some other guy that was cheating was holding me back. I started to wonder if I had decided to put that needle to my ass cheek, would things have been different. I started to hate the game.

So while some people out there are angry that the star players used these PEDs to pad their stats, those stats can be fixed with an asterisk. The fringe player gets a free pass in all of this, but why? How can we fix the broken dreams? How can we help the grieving mother or father who lost their son because he was using PEDs?

While everyone worries about the sacred records, and argues about players that should not be in the hall of fame, try to remember that there was more at stake. PED usage affected more than just the record books.

Nobody should be surprised about the two latest positive test results. I listened to an interview of a player not too long ago (the player’s name slips my mind right now), but he said at one point he believed that 90% of players were on some sort of PED. That’s nine out of ten players! Shouldn’t it be the other way around? It was so prevalent in the game, to think the problem would just go away with a snap of the fingers, was not realistic.

The bottom line is that when money is at stake, there will always be people looking to gain an advantage. It doesn’t matter what business they’re in, they will do whatever it takes, even if it involves breaking the rules. On Wall Street, there is insider information. In casinos, people try to count cards. In school, students pay other students to take their SAT exams. Let’s face it, cheating is happening all around us. There are rules in place to try and limit the amount of cheating, but where there are rules, you will always have people willing to bend those rules. They will bend them, to the point of breaking them, in order to gain an advantage.

The reason why baseball will never be able to rid itself of this disease of PEDs is because there is just too much money at stake for these players. The people that produce these drugs understand that. Let’s not forget that they are in business for themselves as well. If they want to stay in business, they have to stay ahead of the curve with masking agents to counteract the testing for PEDs.

Let’s look at it from a player’s perspective. Hypothetically speaking, if you had to pay someone $1 million to mask your PED usage, but you were being paid $10 million per year due to your enhanced performance on PEDs, but without PEDs, you might only make $4 million per year due to lower performance, which would you choose? If the player invests $1 million to cover up the PED usage, their salary increases by $5 million. Not a bad investment. Now factor into the equation that other players are already doing this. Your performance when you are not using PEDs looks so inferior when compared to your peers on PEDs, that you may lose your job. Would you consider PEDs now? It’s easy to see why this is so tempting for players (not that I would ever condone it).

Baseball has to accept the fact that PEDs will always be around as long as large amounts of money are at stake. It’s just human nature to try and gain a competitive edge, and this is survival of the fittest to the extreme. The only way to rid baseball of this disease would be to come up with a vaccine, not a band-aid. This isn’t a boo-boo, it’s a disease. The testing and subsequent 50 game ban that comes with a positive test result today, is merely a band-aid for the problem. The fact that people are still being caught is proof of that. The penalty of a positive test result is still not serious enough to deter a player from taking the risk of using PEDs, especially when seeking out a multi-million dollar contract.

The vaccine, and ultimate end of PEDs as we know them, would be a lifetime ban from baseball if caught using PEDs. Give all cheaters the Pete Rose treatment. That is the stance that Major League Baseball and the MLBPA should take if they really want to put an end to PED use. Some cases of PED use would still rear their heads from time to time, even if a lifetime ban hangs in the balance. No matter how harsh the penalty, there will always be people willing to push the envelope. But if a lifetime ban doesn’t put a stop to all PED use, then I don’t think anything will.

Tepedino’s career spanned parts of eight seasons from 1967-1975. He played for the New York Yankees, Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves. Though he was never a Met, I felt like what he had to say was relevant for our site.

During that time, performance-enhancing drugs were not part of the game. Talent and hard work alone were the sole determinants of a player’s success on the field. However, as steroids became popular in the game around the mid-1990s, the level playing field changed greatly.

Super-human athletes were taking the game by storm, which certainly put fans in the seats, but also compromised the integrity of the game. Tepedino addressed the issue of whether he would have used steroids if they were available.

“You can’t answer that question until you’re in that situation and you look at right and wrong,” he said. “Where is the wrong of it? Is it because it gives you an advantage over another athlete? But what if that other athlete is doing it, and nothing is being done about it?”

Tepedino gave an example for this year’s MLB B.A.T. Dinner in New York City. Former Minnesota Twins outfielder asked former Yankees third baseman Mike Pagliarulo is the latter would have ever used steroids? But Gladden told Pagliarulo not to answer the question immediately, but instead deeply think about it before giving an answer.

Pagliarulo thought hard, but he couldn’t come up with a firm answer. Tepedino agreed that it is such a tough decision based on all the extra factors.

“Here you are not using them,” Tepedino said. “But the guy on the mound is using them. The catcher is using. The guys in the minors are using. The guy in the minors is going to take your job. The guy on the mound has an advantage over you.”

When weighing these factors, it’s a lot easier to see why many players turned to steroids, especially veterans later in their careers. Put yourself in their shoes for an instant: You have to support a family and kids, but your talent is diminishing. In order to continue playing and earning a paycheck, you need that extra edge so you take steroids. It’s really a tough call.

“Realistically by not doing it, you’re basically saying that’s the end of my career, because someone is going to take my job,” Tepedino said. “And that guy that has an advantage over me is going to get me out. You can’t just say, ‘No I’m not going to use them or yes I’m going to use them.’ You don’t know until you’re in that situation. That’s human nature.”

Many former players, like Tepedino, claim that based on their morals, they would not use steroids if given the choice. He said players like Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth were all clean and still excelled at the game.

The thing with those players is that nobody else was using steroids at that time, so a player’s own ability determined performance. Without steroids, only the top-tier of players shined. But once steroids were introduced, normally average players began putting up monster numbers and performed better than players with more talent but who chose not to use.

And then of course there’s the money factor. The players who perform the best get the most money. Simple right? But not when steroids are involved.

“They’re making two million [dollars] a year, and you’re home carrying a lunch bucket working in a factory in the offseason because of your morals,” said Tepedino.

Tepedino said that though he may have struggled with the decision he ultimately would have chosen not to use steroids.

“You might not have a good as career as someone else, but you can go to sleep at night and say ‘I did the right thing,’” he concluded.

So before we chastise a player for using steroids because they are illegal in the game, put yourself firmly in their shoes. Hopefully, many of you would choose not to use, but based on the extra factors, it’s a tougher decision when you’re actually faced with it.

So would you use steroids if everyone else was using and your job and family livelihood depended on it?

Being labeled as being the most valuable in any aspect of life is a pretty special occurrence. It’s not every day that you or I get an honor like that, and the same goes for professional sports. There have been plenty of players in Major League Baseball that have extraordinary careers and get elected to the Hall of Fame, yet either fail to win an MVP award or possibly just win one. When a player has the honor given to him more than once, then we have a special athlete on our hands.

There have only been 29 players in Major League history that have won multiple league MVP awards, with only 10 of those 29 winning the award three or more times. Barry Bonds is in a club by himself since he won the NL MVP award an astonishing seven times. The three-time winners include: Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, and Mike Schmidt.

Even though I’m from the school of thought that Barry Bonds took performance enhancing drugs during the later part of his career, being named the best player in your respective league for 31% of your entire career is pretty amazing, especially since the last four times he won the award, he did so consecutively.

I can only imagine what it would be like if Bonds accomplished all that he did in his career without using performance enhancing drugs. He is the all-time and single-season home run leader, with 762 and 73 home runs, respectively. He finished with a .298 career average, 1,996 RBI, 514 stolen bases, 2,935 hits, 2,227 runs scored, and 2,558 walks (another record). Along with his seven MVP awards, he holds 12 silver slugger awards, eight gold gloves, and was selected to the All-Star game 14 times.

If I look at these statistics without knowing the name of the player and I was asked whether this player is a Hall of Famer, I would say yes without a hesitation. However, with the PED cloud following him for the rest of his days on this Earth, I’m quite positive that he won’t even come close to getting the necessary 75% vote needed to be inducted into the Hall- and I don’t want him in there.

Being in the Hall of Fame is an honor and those who cheated to get ahead of their competition (McGuire, Sosa, and Clemens also come to mind) don’t deserve to be honored with the best players in the history of the game. It’s too bad because before Bonds started putting up these ridiculous power numbers, I would have considered him a Hall of Famer anyways. Do you think he should be inducted in Cooperstown?

The last question I ask every week is a simple one: can this record be broken? I actually think there is a small chance. I don’t think A-Rod will be winning anymore of these as he’s entering his late-30s and is already showing signs of slowing down. However, Albert Pujols has the opportunity to challenge this record because he’s such an amazing player that he is somehow involved in MVP discussions on a year-in-year-out basis. Who do you think has a chance to challenge this record?