MLBPA drops ball with steroids and blockbuster deal

The Major League Baseball Players Association has let its players down.

Two of the biggest issues in professional sports right now would be resolved if the MLBPA stepped up and did what was best for the majority of its players.

First, Alex Rodriguez. I'm not a Red Sox fan. I'm not a Yankees fan. But the MLBPA should have done everything it could to facilitate the deal with the Red Sox.

Sure, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman did a great job getting his deal for A-Rod to work, but it's bad for the competitive balance of baseball. If the MLBPA were really trying to do what's best for all its players, it would be pushing for more parity in baseball.

While the final A-Rod trade does not guarantee the Yankees the American League East title or even a playoff berth, it sure makes it tough for the Blue Jays or Orioles to even sniff it.

People complain about players jumping ship to one team or another just to win a ring. Roger Clemens went to the Yankees for one a few years ago, and Rodriguez is doing it now. It's a theme, and it's not going to go away. Well, here's a novel idea: make it possible for more than one team to be a leading contender for the title every year. That's what the NFL has done, and it's clearly yielded a more relevant product on the field.

Obviously, the MLBPA is supposed to be representing its players and does not want to set the precedent that allowing Rodriguez to be paid less would set. However, the group has a much greater obligation to the legions of players in Major League Baseball than it does to its one or two top stars.

Obviously, trading A-Rod was doable — the Yankees got it done. So why didn't the MLBPA step out of its medieval fear of showing some humanity by helping to negotiate while the Red Sox deal was on the table? Two million dollars here or there in MLB means nothing.

If the MLBPA were less arcane in its practices, it could not only have made its best player happy by getting him out of the black hole that is the Rangers organization, it also would have made every player not on the Yankees much happier than they are now. The MLBPA should see its mission as helping every player who has membership.

Only four A.L. teams make the playoffs, so why should one be reserved every year for the Yankees? I have no problem with their steep spending, because they're winning, and they make money. Their spending yields all the returns that spending on a major league team should yield. But if I considered myself a representative of all major league players, I would have done what I could to keep a big chunk of them in the race for at least a playoff spot come Opening Day.

Second issue, steroids. President Bush was slightly misguided in his State of the Union address, claiming that steroids are a rampant problem in baseball and football. They're actually just a rampant problem in baseball, not football. Every league and professional organization got doused with a bucket of ice water when the designer steroid THG was discovered, but the NFL has been consistently good about protecting its players and its image from steroids.

The President was not wrong, however, for singling out baseball.

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So here's a message for the MLBPA: WAKE UP! Using steroids is cheating! Don't you get it? This isn't a PR battle. It's sport.

When you treat it like PR, you end up with a list of graded punishments that mean nothing to a multimillionaire athlete for cheating.

Here are the tough MLB "rules:" You cheat once: "treatment." Twice: a two-week vacation and a maximum fine of $10,000. Three times (surely something big): tack another 10 days onto that vacation for maybe $15,000 more. Four times? Just double your long vacation to fifty days (the dog days of summer when nobody wants to be playing anyway) and pay $50,000. Five times: one-year suspension and a fine of up to $100,000.

I can get a one-year suspension from Princeton for spending an extra half-hour on a take-home exam . . . once! That's a good system. Cheating five times and getting nothing but a year to relax on your yacht or in your "crib!" Ridiculous.

Here, again, is the MLBPA bargaining hard to help the minority of its constituents. Relatively conservative estimates put four to five players in each clubhouse using steroids, according to ESPN. That's 20-25 percent of players. But far fewer would do it if they didn't think they had to so they could keep their jobs. If you had just been called up from the minors and were battling for a roster spot and knew there was no punishment, wouldn't you consider it?

If the MLBPA would wake up and notice that its sport is deteriorating into something fewer and fewer fans care about because of its own antediluvian practices — like protecting players from punishment for breaking the rules and promoting lopsided teams in order to gain more cash in the short term instead of promoting the game in the long term — it would be helping a much larger proportion of its players. Right now, it cares about nothing except immediate cash and maintaining its own power.

The MLBPA can help the game just by helping the majority of its players. Curt Flood did not sacrifice much of his career battling for free agency so Alex Rodriguez could make $252 million. It was so Joe Schmoe major leaguer wouldn't get blackballed.

So MLBPA, get back to fighting for those who need your help and for whom fairness in Major League Baseball is becoming harder and harder to come by.