A Good Year for the Outlaw

Today’s idea: Helping baseball get rid of ‘roids.

My rules would be simple and a helluva lot more strict than what we see today, and would instead of simply punishing the players with a slap on the wrist would punish the teams that signed them.

1. If you have a player ANYWHERE in your organization, from Major League to Rookie ball, caught testing positive for steroids, and btw this INCLUDES HGH, that player is out for 100 games AND he is out for the playoffs, no matter the level.

2. If you have a SECOND player in your organization testing positive in the same calendar year, he is out for 100 games and for the playoffs at his level, AND your highest level team affected cannot compete in the next available playoff bracket. In other words, one minor leaguer and one big leaguer test positive in November 2009, that team’s major league franchise is barred from the 2010 playoffs.

Any whining? Tough.

You want to talk about players policing themselves if this was put into effect, wow! You want to talk about franchises being discouraged from turning the other cheek? This is how you do it.

College athletic teams get barred from postseason when they go on probation, many times for things that happened during tenures of coaches who have long since left a school (see: Lou Holtz, about three times). Why do pro teams get a pass while the players get suspended? Make the FRANCHISES as responsible as the players for cheating. Then it gets fixed. Real quick.