"A streak of light on a baseball player ..."

"The real drugs to talk about with Dee Gordon, the son of a Major League ballplayer, aren't exogenous Testosterone and Costebol. The drugs to talk about, now that another star player has been banged for 80 games because he was dumb enough to believe some chemist or doctor or some guy he met at the gym, are these: entitlement and insecurity and greed.

That is the drug cocktail for any athlete who thinks he is going to be the one to cheat the game and beat the game at the same time, and it remains both powerful and addictive, even in a sport like baseball, where testing works."

The real drugs are Testosterone and Costebol.

Testing doesn't work in baseball.

Other than those minor corrections, you are right on, Mike Lupica.


"And the only thing dumber than the belief from someone like Gordon -- a streak of light on a baseball player, the defending National League batting champion -- that you will never get caught is the statement you release after you do get caught."

I think it's funny because Gordon only has 8 career HRs.



"You also have to know something else: They take it thinking that if they do get caught, as shocked as Gordon was this week and Colabello was last week, they will ride it out and come back and still get paid. It happened that way with Melky Cabrera. It happened that way with Jhonny Peralta, a Biogenesis All-Star. And the players who don't take the stuff look at this and see ballplayers getting rewarded for a form of fraud. The word Bob Costas uses about the numbers put into the books by guys using the stuff is 'inauthentic.' He is absolutely right.

One of these days, you wonder if the cost of getting caught using drugs will be one simple act that might actually get everybody's attention once and for all: Your contract going from guaranteed to unguaranteed. Jim Duquette, a former baseball executive, now a broadcaster, once again talked about that on Friday. Because, really, what law has ever been passed in this country that says a guaranteed contract in sports is supposed to survive a nuclear attack?"

It's embarrassing to get suspended 80 games. Gordon lost some of his $50 million. From a cost-benefit standpoint, the benefits seem to outweigh the costs.