In the professional sports world, Melky Cabrera would be considered Lilliputian - a twerp. In the old days, he would be classified as a Punch-and-Judy hitter.
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He cheated, though. Too much testosterone in his system, the tests indicated.
Our jaws dropped in shock - not because it should come as a surprise that any athlete these days might be on PEDs. We're shocked because Melky admitted it. He fessed up. He said he wanted to get better. He apologized. And then went off to serve his 50-game penance.
He didn't blame the courier. He didn't question the chain of custody. Or cast mock suspicion over some newfangled supplement he purchased at the local vitamin store. He simply admitted it. That's something professional athletes just don't do - not without a lawyer nearby.
And in the face of all of this, that's one small foothold on his steep climb back to forgiveness.
But it's too soon for that. He'll have 50 games to think about what he did. Fifty games to wonder how much money he cost himself on the free agent market next winter.
It's sad. For three months, he was one of the best stories in baseball. It all came to an end on Wednesday. Truly sad. But a good friend of mine - a Dillon's muckity-muck who apparently is auditioning for a career as a headline writer if the grocery thing doesn't work out - bottom-lined the whole incident with a single text message: Don't cry over pilled Melk.
Brilliant.
He's right. The game will go on. It always does.
It's ironic that Melky's sudden fall from grace came just hours before Felix Hernandez pitched the third perfect game of the season - an unprecedented feat for a game that has had just 23 perfectos ever.
Now how are we to explain this sudden rash of no-hitters?
Too many had jumped to the conclusion that the rise in no-nos coincided with the game finally cleaning up its act with a drug-testing program that it claimed eliminated the dopers.
Is anyone else ready to call balderdash?
BALCO co-founder Victor Conte is. The mastermind of a PED scandal that included athletes from a variety of sports - from track and field athletes to football players to baseball players - told USA Today this week that as many as 50 percent of MLB players might be doping.
Half the players? That's alarming. It might be more disconcerting than in baseball's not-so-distant Tarnished Age because the steroid abusers are much harder to spot today. Picking out the culprits used to be as simple as comparing a player's hat size from one season to the next.
Today's cheaters are doing so incognito.
There is nobody hitting 73 home runs a year any longer. No one is blasting 60 bombs - or even 50. Chicks dig the long ball. Or at least they used to. The days of Barry, Sammy and Big Mac flexing their muscles, swinging mightily and trotting around the bases are - just like their colossal clouts - long gone.
Today's culprits are far more stealth. At least the hitters are. They raise an eyebrow as their performances improve consistently. Baseball is clean now. The amphetamines have been taken from the game, too, making it much more difficult for an athlete to answer the bell each day - and do so with the same kind of vigor and vitality he had the day before.
Melky brought suspicion upon himself by hitting .305 and smacking 18 homers for the Royals last season. He followed that up this season with the Giants by being even gaudier. He was hitting .346 with 11 home runs and was leading the majors with 159 hits.
More over, he was he was named the MVP of the All-Star Game in Kansas City last month by leading the National League to a victory that assured it home-field advantage in the World Series. There's something unsettling about that.
The test doesn't lie. And Melky didn't argue the results. He cheated. And he'll pay for it.
But I still don't know how having more testosterone in his system helped this particularly ballplayer - with a game predicated on contact hitting and hustle - to be better.
Did it give him better eyesight to see the baseball? Did it aid in his hand-eye coordination? Or did it simply give him more speed?
Nobody seems to have a good answer. Nobody can quantify just how a little more testosterone coursing through his body made Melky better. Perhaps it just gave him confidence. Maybe it just made him feel stronger. Maybe it didn't make him better at all.
It's a tough one to quantify.
Then again, cheating is cheating. I guess.
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Source : Cabrera's honesty a rarity in professional sports - Hutchinson Information
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