Braun and Others Deserve the Baseball Death Penalty

A day after Ryan Braun’s suspension for the remainder of the season was announced, I am still unsatisfied.

In agreement with my longtime hero in sports media, Dick Vitale, the twenty or so players involved with Anthony Bosch’s biogenesis clinic as well as anyone who has ever been selfishly involved with steroids deserve the ultimate punishment in baseball- the death penalty.

The latest chapter in baseball’s ongoing fight against performance enhancing drugs has called for desperate measures from commissioner Bud Selig. Like Pete Rose and the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, these players linked to steroids do not deserve to ever play in the MLB ever again, regardless of how good they are, what they have done, or how much fans love to watch them play.

They are cheaters.

They cheated themselves, the game, their organization, and their fans.

When the 1919 scandal of Chicago White Sox players being bribed to lose the World Series, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis administered the baseball death penalty to discourage other players from compromising the game’s integrity. Landis, who attended White Sox games regularly, audaciously banned fan favorites as well as future Hall of Famers like Eddie Cicotte and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson from the sport despite their talent.

The ruling did its job. Through the next 70 years, there was really only one other significant known scandal.

Like Jackson, another Cooperstown bound player, career hits leader, Pete Rose, was banned for life from baseball and later ruled ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Rose was accused by then commissioner Bart Giamatti of betting on games and against his team as a manager and a player.

Much like the punishment system used widely throughout history of executing criminals extremely or publically to prevent future offenses, Giamatti and Landis succeeded for the most part in limiting players involved in gambling. Both commissioners demonstrated radical measures to warn or scare other players from rigging games.

Selig, a native of Milwaukee where Braun’s Brewers play, needs to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and preserve the overall spirit of the game by ending this tainted chapter of baseball lore.

Steroids are much more serious than simply breaking baseball’s good spirit like Rose and the Black Sox did.

The health issues caused by steroids alone should be enough of a punishment to discourage players from cheating. Steroids have been known to cause various cancers as well as cardiovascular and kidney problems.

Unlike the gambling scandals, steroids affect more than just the players and their teams. Steroids can give players a substantial advantage over opponents and may have warped performances and stats at the cost of the opposition. By making users unnaturally bigger and stronger, steroids could also be the culprits behind numerous injuries.

If gambling was enough of an offense to ban some of the best players to ever play baseball for life, steroids almost certainly are too. The suspensions have proved to not be enough. Steroids are a much more serious matter than betting on games ever was or will be.

For baseball to be restored, and for young fans like me, who have grown up only knowing a tainted game, to experience the beauty of clean baseball, Selig needs to leave his mark on the sport as commissioner by eliminating all steroids and all cheaters.