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At this climactic time of the baseball season, we should all be talking about the Major League races, or the Northwoods closing surges, or maybe the Little League or American Legion tournaments conducted here or not far away.
   Instead, the vast majority of baseball talk centers on Alex Rodriguez and company -- the Major League stars who have now been disclosed as having consumed or injected human growth hormones, testosterone, and who know what all else, in an attempt to cheat the system.

I happen to believe that a lot of the first offenders might have unwittingly gotten into the stuff because pushers and drug sales types talked trainers and others close to the scene of helping out their players from being sore the next day. Human growth hormone is something generated by the body, and it naturally replenishes cells for fast recovery. As people age, the recovery takes a little longer. If you were an athlete, in a dressing room, and a trainer you trusted told you to take these half-dozen pills because they will help rejuvenate your cells overnight so you won’t feel sore or stiff in the morning, you would eagerly take them.

And if you took them, and they worked, you’d want to keep taking them.Testosterone is something else that is generated by every body, male and female. Having a high level of testosterone seems to coincide with being an elite athlete, and some believe that if a high level helps performance, a higher level would help it more. It’s natural, right? So let’s have some.

These things, to me, are in a grey area. They are not like steroids, which can bulk up a body to superhuman muscles and strength. They can have enormous impact on an athletic career, and can also have horrendous after-effects on vital organs and bodily parts. Horrible diseases, organ failures, and early death are common side-effects. But the pressures of our society cause otherwise sane people to decide that they want stardom so badly that they will risk what might happen in the future for instant gratification now.

If taking artificially created supplements can do the job your body should be doing, those glands and organs in your body can have a furlough and not function the way they should. If you stop taking them, there’s no certainty your body will start functioning normally again.

Whatever the case, baseball has come up with rules that say you can’t take certain things, and when A-Rod, Ryan Braun, Jhonny Peralta and the others took human growth hormones and/or testoterone from the “anti aging” clinic in Florida, they knew they were doing something illegal. And they lied about it. Now that they’ve been caught, what do we do with them?

Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball decided to wait and wait and finally announce 50-game suspensions to all but A-Rod, on a date that left 50 games in the regular season. That means the players will go without pay the rest of the season, but then they’ll be eligible to rejoin their teams and step back into their regular positions for the playoffs. They’ll also resume their incredibly high salaries.

To me, if you want to make the suspensions sting both the player and his team, make the suspensions carry through the playoffs and all.

As for A-Rod, who is the only player appealing the suspension, he is doing it because he doesn’t seem to have any feeling for his impact on the game, for the game itself, and for anything other than his own incredible wealth. Because he lied about his participation, and reportedly guided other players to try the clinic, he gets a 211 game suspension. The grating thing is that while he appeals, he gets to play. The length of his suspension covers the rest of this season and all of next season, so by appealing and playing some games, he fouls up the count of games

My suggestion is that the suspension should have said that it would be for two seasons -- this one and next -- unless he appeals and keeps playing. In that case, he should be suspended for the next two seasons, after this one. Then see how anxious he is to appeal and keep playing.
   Next, I think the climate is right for the Players Association to agree with the baseball administration and make such violations stick, big time.

If we want to see the grand old game of baseball cleaned up, let’s get serious and make the penalties sting.

Henceforth, in my world, all contracts will state that anyone taking any illegal substance shall be suspended without pay, and his contract will be nullified. No more millions of dollars waiting for the end of the suspension.

Maybe all first-time violations should require a one-year suspension, and all second offenses get an automatic suspension until age 50. A-Rod and his cohorts could make that work. When they head for Florida and the anti-aging clinic, they’re not far from where they discovered the Fountain of Youth. The real fountain might be a myth, or it might be a miracle. But the after-market, chemically-induced, over-the-counter or clandestine attempts at youth in a bottle have no place in amateur or professional sports.