Skip to main content

Schadenfreude

Sometimes, I don't know how to feel. And this is one of those times.

As you either have heard or should have heard by now, you lazy know-nothing ingrate, a court of appeals recently ruled that...well, to be on the safe side, let's just quote the story:

With Barry Bonds still in their sights, federal investigators probing steroids in sports can now use the names and urine samples of about 100 Major League Baseball players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, following a ruling Wednesday from a federal appeals court.

The 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned three lower court decisions and could help authorities pinpoint the source of steroids in baseball.

I don't know about this. If you don't remember, the first year of steroid testing was supposed to, according to reports at the time, be completely confidential-intended more as a survey to see how prevalent steroid use was in baseball before real testing-and punishment-began.

Obviously, that's not how it played out. Someone was keeping track of who took what test, otherwise the feds wouldn't waste their time trying to get the records.

To be honest, I just don't know enough about the case. It could be the union lawyers who were responsible for the negotiations made some mistake and inadvertently allowed Major League Baseball to keep all the information. Then MLB, since it has surrendered all semblance of leverage to the players' union, then let the feds do what they do best-clean up baseball's messes so they don't have to. But what it looks like right now is that players could end up being punished for tests they took-testing they only agreed to because they thought it would be anonymous. And if that's really all it is, I don't like the precedent this sets.

On the other hand, while my general distaste for unions has cooled over the years, my absolute hatred for the MLBPA knows nearly no limits. It'd be great to see them screwed over for ignoring players' health and delaying beyond any reasonable expectation the implementation of steroid testing.

What do y'all think? More specifically, Cap'n, would you like to explain this all to us?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The NFL hates you.

It's no joke. It seems like the more devoted of a fan you are, the less the league cares about your continued patronage. The best example is the league's blackout policy, a wonderful gift from the league to its teams granting them added market pressure to charge whatever ridiculous amount they want for tickets. If a game doesn't sell out, the home market doesn't get to watch it on TV. (Basically, a 75-mile radius around the stadium doesn't get to see the game on TV if all the tickets aren’t bought first.) The NFL, like a needy girlfriend, says, "Hey, fans, you like us? Prove it." Then the league asks us to prove it again and again, week after week, year after year. I live within 75 miles of what should be John Elway Stadium, but Broncos fans are pretty much shielded from this stuff, right? Not all of them. One of my friends is as supportive a fan as the NFL can have: he's a Broncos season ticket holder and an NFL Sunday Ticket subscriber. That mean...
4 comments
Read more

Did CU ever win the Pac-12?

In 2010, I bet a college buddy of mine (who longtime readers may remember as the only other contributor to Hole Punch Sports) that CU’s football team would not win the Pac-12 in the next 15 years. Guess what? It’s time for me to gloat, because I was right. Why we were doomed Back in the day, a lot of people made the argument that CU should join the Pac-12 because we’d get so much more TV money there. Of course, given college football is the answer to the question, “what if you had a sport where multiple teams were like the Yankees, and you created a whole universe of haves and have-nots?”, then yeah, you want to be aligned with some of the haves. But the question in my mind wasn’t, “will CU be better off with more money?” That’s an obvious yes. The question I asked was, will CU be any more competitive in their own conference if they’re competing against teams who are also getting more money? I couldn’t see why they would be. The mathematical angle Legend has it that Cowboys runn...
1 comment
Read more

The day the music died

Seven years, seven months…actually, almost eight months, if you’re keeping track . That feels right, but also way too short. I started following the NBA around the 1996-97 season. I jumped on the Bulls bandwagon and will never regret it, but my favorite team was my hometown one, the Denver Nuggets. They went 21-61. The next year they were 11-71. I learned early on how few players actually made it big, even the most hyped. Antonio McDyess was one of the two real talents we had in those lean years, but his temperament and durability made him a disappointment. Still, I loved those teams: inside enforcers like Tommy Hammonds and Danny Fortson, the promising Bobby Jackson, the high-flying Darvin Ham, and even Nick Van Exel. The other talent was a young point guard named Chauncey Billups who I once saw, in person, hit a three from about halfway between the three-point line and halfcourt to beat the shot clock. Like it was nothing. I remembered pulling for us to get him in the draft, but wh...
5 comments
Read more