Baseball has a big problem. The guy leading the National League (and all of Major League Baseball) in hitting is a cheater.
Melky Cabrera has been banned from baseball for 50 games after testing positive for testosterone, an illegal performance-enhancing drug. Yet if you check out the stats on the Major League Baseball website (click here): MLB Leaders you’ll find Cabrera listed as the top batter overall, with a .346 average.
Cabrera is hitting 3 points above the all-natural Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He’s also hitting 9 points higher than rookie phenom Mike Trout, who is the latest victim of the Sports Illustrated Jinx.
Since appearing on the August 27 cover issue of the magazine,
Mike Trout on the cover of S.I.
Trout has just one hit in 13 at bats, while striking out 5 times.
But back to baseball’s big dilemma. Why aren’t banned players banned from the record books? Who says cheaters never prosper when Cabrera is still listed as the leading hitter in the game? Why should Cabrera be handed the battle title when he broke the rules of the game?
Commissioner Bud Selig could send a strong message to players and fans by deleting the tainted accomplishments of Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and others who have cheated the game. If teams had to sacrifice victories for cheating (as in college football), don’t you think managers and coaches would stop looking the other way? Didn’t the San Francisco Giants
AT&T Park
suspect that Melky Cabrera was using something, while hitting 91 points better than he did with the Braves just two years ago — and 72 points higher than he did with the Yankees in 2009?
It is possible to eliminate cheaters from the game. But it takes balls to do it. And so far Commissioner Bud Selig has been unable and unwilling to neuter the problem.
