Ex Post Facto

Ex Post Facto

Mark McGwire hardly surprised anyone when he was caught with amphetamines. Sammy Sosa made steroid use a laughing stock when his "corked" back shattered. And there weren't too many people, myself included, who didn't want to mark Barry's 756th home run ball with an asterisk and send it to Cooperstown branded. And just this week, Manny Ramirez received a fifty game suspension for the use of "performance-enhancing drugs", but this time, I'm batting for the other team.

I'll admit I was ecstatic when I heard the news. The L.A. Dodgers, the team who, in their infinite wisdom, structured their entire organization around this one player, seemed to be out of commission until July. I burst into fits of laughter when I heard Ramirez' story: "My doctor gave me some pills for a personal problem I'm having and we didn't know they were against the rules". Well played, Manny, well played.

But today, when I opened my Sunday New York Times, the laughing stopped. It turns out, Manny didn't test positive for any performance-enhancing drugs. He tested positive for human chorionic gonadotropin (H.C.G) which is usually given as a fertility treatment for women, but can be used to generate testosterone in men, after they have stopped using steroids. The audacity of Major League Baseball to suspend a player on the suspicion that he may have used drugs, in the past, is absolutely ludicrous.

Imagine your doctor prescribed you a pain killer, let's say Vicodin. You take this pill and feel better; congratulations. Three years later, Congress passes a bill that says Vicodin is illegal and it comes out that you took the pill 3 years ago. Should you go to jail? No. That's why we have ex post facto laws in the United States: to prevent people from being punished for something they couldn't have known was wrong at the time.

Assuming Manny took steroids, there's no way to know that wasn't before Major League Baseball had banned and began testing for them. In fact, his use of H.C.G. is striking proof that he is not using steroids any more. Even so, my analogy is somewhat overreaching. MLB can't even prove Ramirez was using steroids prior to taking H.C.G. Suspending a player for almost a third of the season based on ultimately no evidence whatsoever constitutes the epitome of stupidity and puts a major failure on an otherwise successful program.

I'm sorry Mr. Selig, you got this one wrong.