Selig Shaves Suspensions, Mocks Mitchell; Could Manny Get a Year?

Something just bugged me about Manny Ramirez' return to legitimacy.

How could he be playing in MiLB while still serving his "50 game suspension?" 

With no offense to my colleagues from the major league media, we know that they get very caught up in the show of the Show. MLB is the Chris Angel of professional sports. They can manipulate illusions into realities with ease.

I don't do illusions well. I can't, for example, see 3D like the rest of y'all. I'm also a reader of the fine print.  I have done several pieces on steroids in the minor leagues.  I also had to read through the Professional Baseball Agreement, the deal that governs how Minor League Baseball (MiLB) handles its business with MLB.

Something just wasn't right.

So I emailed Steve Densa, the Director of Media Relations for MiLB, how they admitted Manny Ramirez into the regular season while he was still on suspension.

"He was allowed to play in the Minors according to MLR 9.  If you want to know the rules before writing another article, I suggest contacting Sandie Hebert.. in our legal department about purchasing a Rules Book."

I really have to thank Steve for that great piece of advice. $70.00 later, I was in possession of a copy of the Major League Rules (MLR).

So I thumbed to MLR-9, assuming it would all be explained for me.

Nope. It applied to players on the active list.  So I read on. I read the whole MLR, cover to cover.

It had punishments for gambling and fixing a game. It had punishments for breaking the real law.  It even had a nice old-timey Fatty Arbuckle clause that allows the Commissioner to suspend players for acts of "moral turpitude."

Nothing about drugs. Nada. Zip. Zero.

I have been covering professional baseball for more than 10 years. I was shocked to find out that Major League Baseball is being run by Selig's office not for the benefit of the fans, or the game, or really even the owners.  The MLB Players Association (MLBPA or the PA) has the power to strike, and that, in turn, strikes enough fear into Selig and his cronies that they will do anything, including, apparently, carving a big bypass through the rules and ethics of the game of baseball to keep Donald Fehr and the PA happy.

Unfortunately Selig and his brain trust over at the Commissioners office who all make millions to keep the game running like a TIMEX, can't figure out how to write up rules and contracts that don't contradict themselves or just flat-out work together.

Their Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is a side-car deal that should further clarify what is already in the MLR about player contracts and movement.  The CBA says that it is a side car deal, in one key passage.

The Joint Drug Treatment and Prevention Plan (aka The Joint Drug Agreement or JDA) is a sidecar of that sidecar deal.  It is not a rule of the game. It is a deal with the union which Selig brokered to get "suspensions" for players who test positive for use of Performance-Enhancing Substances (PES). 

Oh, all you journalists who jumped on the Performance-Enhancing Drugs (PED) moniker.. WRONG.   hGH is not a drug, it is a hormone. PES covers all of the sins of cheating by injection.

We found out a lot more.  There is no rule to suspend the players for 50 games.

There is a rule to suspend them, but Manny, J.C. Romero, Mike Cameron and Sergio Mitre sure won't like the year or more that they'll be doing. 

I would assume that the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, and Milwaukee Brewers will likewise be displeased if Selig actually enforces the real rules on the book.

They may have company. Selig's cherry-picking that allowed major leaguers to violate the rules again by serving time in the minors will have some serious consequences for dozens of other athletes and clubs in MiLB. 

They were suspended as of the day that any of these players took the field, and their clubs and their leagues will have to asterisk the season because of Selig's loose interpretations of his rules and side agreements.

I'm not sure what shocks me more: The balls of Selig and his cronies who are tromping all over the game, right under the noses of sleeping sports writers who should be acting like the Fourth Estate rather than sucking up more of the Commissioner's mendacities, or the sheer ineptitude of the Selig Brain Trust at doctoring up the century-plus rules of the game to simply make their appeasement of the PA LEGAL under the rules of the game.

The why of that one is worth the read itself.

If you want to know how all that can and should happen, or if you love the game enough to find out why both reporters and fans are having the wool pulled over their eyes by MLB and the PA, you should read the full SZ special report "At What Cost Peace" in the current issue of the first electronic sports magazine on the Internet, celebrating its tenth anniversary: SZ (www.mlnsports.com)