The Court of Public Opinion.

"This is what happens when you are far more interested in protecting the guilty, as the Major League Baseball Players Association has done for years with drugs, than you are the innocent."

Generally speaking, the guilty need more protection than the innocent.


"Alex Rodriguez happens."

Is that how Alex Rodriguez happened? The story about the stork is just make believe?


" '(The union) has never looked to elevate the innocent,' one baseball manager said yesterday. 'And that's as big a reason as any why fans have so much trouble, even now, telling the innocent and the guilty apart.' "

I think it's quiet easy to tell the innocent from the guilty. Or at least have a fairly solid personal opinion. Which is all any of this is. Nobody is being tried in real court.

Not that steroid testing would make it any easier, unless a 100% Perfect Test existed. If Brady Anderson tested negative, I'm not going to believe it, anyway.


"You know the dumbed-down chorus now about how drugs don't matter and the steroid era is over."

Who says says drugs don't matter and the steroid era is over?

Who???

Largely due to Barry Bonds's pursuit of the career homerun record, it seems that I have been bombarded with hand-wringing stories about steroids every waking hour for the past two years.

"Tell Alex Rodriguez, who must have liked the back pages of the city's tabloids yesterday even less than Chipper Jones did, even if A-Rod's only crime so far is being the youngest to ever get to 500 home runs in the big leagues."

Biggest crime so far.

But the FBI has some shocking porpoise-smuggling allegations.


"It is something you have heard before about the Mitchell investigation. Rafael Palmeiro, a positive drug test, was there, Canseco was there. And A-Rod was there, but after Canseco. Innocent and guilty, all under the same great big tent."

Fair enough.

You know who else is guilty by association? Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. They played with a guy who knew a guy.

It's all under one big tent. Innocent is the new guilty, right is the new wrong. Jose Canseco is the new Solomon, Mike Lupica is the new Themis.


"To this day the union talks about wanting to clean up the sport and then acts as a human shield between its players and Mitchell. These guys say they are protecting these players. How are they doing with A-Rod, as big a star as they have? How well are they protecting him?"

There is no need to protect ARod.

This is all court of public opinion and, in the court of public opinion, ARod is innocent.

At least when it comes to steroid use. He's guily of not being Derek Jeter. But the vox populi is sated when it comes to the size of his head.