Matt Tillotson

The good news: my all-time favorite baseball player, Ryne Sandberg, has a column on Yahoo! discussing the steroid issue.

The bad news: I don't agree with much of it. The piece is logically flawed.

Sigh. This is painful for me, Ryno, but I have to pick you apart. I pretty much grew up worshiping you. "The Sandberg Game" should be some type of baseball holiday, in my view. But, I have to do this, because you are so very, very wrong. Congrats on Cooperstown nonetheless.

Now, sadly, on with the flogging.

Ryno says:

I have a question for Congress: Why don't you give Major League Baseball's new steroid testing policy a chance?

Commissioner Bud Selig and the players association have installed a drug abuse plan that has worked so far, already lowering the number of players using steroids to less than 1 percent.

Bzzzzzzzzzzt.

The number of players getting caught has lowered to less than one percent. And even that hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) been independently confirmed. Players aren't even supervised when they test — they are free to dump anybody's urine into that plastic cup. And that doesn't even remotely cover the problem of masking agents and undetectable drugs. No one in their right mind really believes only 1% of baseball players used roids last year, do they?

And besides, the reason congress isn't giving the new policy a chance as it stands is that in the minds of many, the policy is laughably weak. David Pinto swayed me a bit on the proper amount of brute force to apply to first time offenders. Testing is not an exact science, and a false positive is certainly possible. The NFL's Jim Miller claims this is what happened to him in 1999 when he had a positive test. Miller claims a legal, over-the-counter suppliment put him over the top. But the penalities must be much stiffer for repeat offenders to rid the game of the problem.

Ryno says:

Random tests will be conducted for every player, and those who test positive will receive a 10-game suspension. That's headline material. That player's career is practically over right there. Once someone's name is out in public as a steroid user, I don't think another team will want to touch him.

Bzzzzzzzzzzt.

You have to be kidding me, Ryno. We have a working case study right now named Jason Giambi. I guess I missed the part about Giambi's career being over. It must've gotten lost in all the praise the Yankees are giving him and in all the love he's getting from fans.

Ryno, do you really believe that any marginally productive player is going to see his career ended early by a positive test? Seriously. You have to be joking. This is the sport that gave coke-head Steve Howe seven chances. And he wasn't even that good. Any player that can swing it or chuck with any skill is going to have a place in the game, no matter how many needles he sticks in his butt — unless he's banned, permanently, by MLB.

This was painful for me, Ryno. I promise to keep my collection of your baseball cards from every year you played. But you are way, way off here. You're covering for the game you love, I suspect. But the only way to heal the game is to get the problem in as much light as possible. Not to go whistling past the testing center, pretending everything is OK.