Brains Before Braun

Justin Braun won the 2011 NL MVP***

Forgive the ridiculous title, I felt like being a clever journalist today.  Today I also want to talk baseball.  The steroid issue has surrounded the game of baseball for as long as I have been alive.  There are baseball greats that have asterisks by their names due to their careers being tainted by steroid talk.  Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers is the most recent player busted for abusing steroids.

The media has done a bunch of coverage on stupid aspects of the steroid issue.  "Should Braun give up his MVP?"  "I cannot believe he lied to us!" "Who else along with Braun is going to be busted?"  These are just examples of what I consider dumb media stories.  What I want to talk about is not Ryan Braun alone, but rather get to the heart of why so many people take steroids in the first place.  The answer, there is low risk and high reward.

Now Braun and A-Rod are both probably in really big trouble and will lose considerable amounts of respect for their tainted name.  But they do not lose money.  Fiscally speaking, taking steroids was the best thing that A-Rod and Braun have ever done.  They both are former MVP, high level baseball players due to their usage of performance enhancing drugs.  Even if A-Rod were to get a lifetime ban, he still was making over $25 million for the past 5-10 years.  Throw in the endorsements he has done with Pepsi and other big market names and he is raking in $30 million a year easily.  Braun is set to make $150 million between 2011 and 2020, when he signed his two big contracts.  That is just over $16 million per year.  Now since he is suspended he will lose the rest of this year's salary.  So instead of $150 million, he will only make $140 million.  You see where I am going with this?  He lost $10 million dollars because he got busted, but if he never took them in the first place he may not have made $10 million his entire life.  The bottom line is that right now cheaters are getting a slap on the wrist.  By all means give me a slap on the wrist and have half of baseball fans hate me for $100 million or more dollars.

What can baseball do to change things?  Lifelong ban!  A-Rod is potentially the first player to face such a ban.  We will see in the near future how that works out.  But if someone is thrown out of the game of baseball forever for the usage of steroids then people won't take them.  Bartolo Colon and Melky Cabrera are two people who paid their time and sat out for half a season because they were busted for steroids.  Colon is now one of the best pitchers in baseball and will receive a big contract in the offseason, like Melky just did.  These guys took PEDs and became better ball players.  They took their punishment, and now they are rich.  Kick these people out of the game.  I know this sounds extreme, but it will work.  Maybe less extreme would be a 5 year penalty or something like that.  But a 100 game suspension is nothing compared to the upside of money these professional athletes can make.

I personally guarantee A-Rod and Braun will make the Hall of Fame that Pete Rose's name will never be in.

I also would like to say that the baseball world plays dumb way too much when talking about steroids.  Jonathan Lucroy, the catcher of the Milwaukee Brewers, claims that he knew nothing about it and supports Braun through everything.  These two were close friends and teammates for a few years.  I find it hard to believe that Lucroy was left in the dark about this the entire time.  When you play 164 game together and spend that much time with each other, you develop certain bonds with players.  It is human nature for us to tell people our deepest secrets as well.  There is a 0% chance Braun has not told ANY of his teammates that he is taking steroids.  I know that nobody likes a tattle tale, but I think anonymously disclosing information could help.  OR if you are good friends and teammates, tell him to get the hell off PEDs to his face for the good of the game.  The culture of baseball needs to change.  I am one of the most competitive people on the planet, but if a teammate of mine was using steroids I would take a huge issue to that.  Even if I were on the brutal Brewers and Braun was the only man on our team worth a crap, I still would take issue to him cheating.  I could go on about this for a while, but integrity within the locker room could restore the integrity of the game.

In addition to harsher penalty including my proposed lifelong ban, there should be financial ramifications.  First off, any awards or incentives should be paid back to the team.  If there is a bonus in a contract for incentives such as "hit 20 home runs and get a million dollar bonus" they should be paid back in full.  I do think any MVP, Hall of Fame, or even team records should be reset if a player is busted for PEDs.  The player should also be liable to legal action outside of the game itself.  Any advertiser should be able to press charges against an athlete caught using steroids, such as Pepsi using A-Rod to advertise their product.  A-Rod should apologize to the public and pay Pepsi back what they gave him.

Enough about semantics.  I am sorry I like to rant and rave about specifics and how these people should be punished.  I lastly want to look at what I said in my title: "Brains Before Braun."  People need to realize that the current situation with baseball and steroids in not that.  It is currently a "brains gets you braun which gets you money" society.  Anyone with a brain knows that steroids get muscle which allows you to play better and make some serious cash.  We need a "brains before braun" attitude with baseball.  We need people to be smarter and know that the adverse affects of steroids outweigh the physical advantage you get.  The problem is, right now it's not true.  As I said with A-Rod and Braun, their lives are better off BECAUSE they used steroids.  All of my suggested ways to halt the continued use of steroids in baseball may sound extreme or crazy or stupid to some of you.  Right now baseball is so plagued by steroid problems that it needs to get extreme, crazy, and debatably stupid to fix it.  The game may never be fixed to prevent PED usage but I would like to think it can be returned to its former glory.  Fix PED usage and fix baseball.