Brace yourself for this one ...

PED users are already in the baseball HOF. I am 100% sure of it. A lot of time is being spent discussing the potential future occurrence of something that has already happened.

 

Lupica tries to reconcile his hatred of the Yankees/ARod with his unwillingness to admit he was wrong:

"It is not as if Robinson Cano is the first Yankee or former Yankee to end up in a story, or even a suspension, about performance-enhancing drugs. Fact is they could start to think about fielding a team on Old Timer's Day for guys like Cano."

So could every team.

"He goes for 80 games now. Alex Rodriguez, who gets treated like the mayor of baseball on television now, went for a whole season once, after lying about his own use of baseball drugs from here to Cooperstown and back. Roger Clemens was one of the stars of the Mitchell Report. And Andy Pettitte says he used human growth hormone, but only to get better and be an even better teammate. Jason Giambi was one of the BALCO All-Stars back in the day."

I like how Cano is suddenly a "former Yankee" instead of a "current Mariner."

The Mariners gave this guy $240 million and hoped he would be the centerpiece of a resurgence of Seattle baseball. While he has played quite well in Seattle overall, they haven't even made the playoffs during Cano's tenure.

Aside from that, you can easily list all the Seattle Mariner offenders ... including ARod Himself, for cryin' out loud.

Remember when Bret Boone drove in 141 runs?

Remember when 37-year-old Edgar Martinez put up a .324/.423/.579 slash line and drove in 145 runs?

Jay Buhner had three straight 40-HR seasons which I don't consider legit, but which most holier-than-thou writers ignore as they gleefully pounce on the Yankees for the Ken Phelps trade.

Nelson Cruz?

 

"So it's not just a former teammate of Cano's like Mark Teixeira saying he's not surprised by what happened to Cano. No one should be surprised about Cano. Or anybody else. As one big baseball executive said to me once, 'They use this stuff because it works.'
 
Now he loses $12 million of that. You'd have to be a dope — literally, figuratively — not to make a deal like that for yourself."

Ha ha, right. Lupica is such a punk. Suddenly, out of nowhere, when the circumstances change, Mike Lupica is the Voice of Pragmatic Reason rather than the Hand-Wringing Keeper of Baseball's Soul.

The same goes ARod, Clemens, Giambi, Pettitte, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Bonds and all the others ... at least they're not dopes.

Which also means Lupica has wasted column space on this topic for the past 20 years.


"[ARod] went to Bosch and Biogenesis for the same reason that Cano surely went to whomever he went, here or in the Dominican Republic: He went looking for something that would work for him. He ended up with a $270 million contract with the Yankees. Cano ended up with a $240 million contract from the Mariners after the Yankees wouldn't give him the years or the money he wanted. A-Rod lost a 10th of that money, or thereabouts. Cano loses a fifth of his contract with the Mariners. Again: You'd have to be a dope not to make a deal like that, in a game Cano now says he wouldn't cheat for anything"

12 divided by 240 is 5 percent, not a fifth, you squid. A fifth is 20 percent.

But it doesn't matter, anyway, does it?

Math isn't Lupica's strong suit. Neither is ethics. Neither is sportswriting.


Lupica got caught, simple as that.

He was wrong about Cano. The Yankees were smart to avoid signing Cano.

So that's the first thing that's impossible for Lupcia to admit. The Yankees were right, which means Lupica was wrong.


It's also impossible for Lupica to admit the obvious truth about his decades-long dismissal of the "BALCO All-Stars": He is not really upset about PED use at all.

He just picks and chooses based on his personal tastes and uses his column to hammer out personal grudges.


Lupica hates the Yankees.

In particular, Lupica enjoys ridiculing Yankee decision-makers.

So Cano was "supposed to" embarrass the Yankees by leading Seattle to the Promised Land while the Yankees descending into irrelevance in a Mets Town Renaissance.

It didn't work out that way and, to add insult to injury, now Cano is revealed as a PED fraud.

Lupica's only way out?

Immediately soften his stance on PED users.