In person,
Dee Gordon is desperately skinny, the sort of person for whom you'd love to buy a large pizza just to see how much of it he could polish off. It's a taut leanness, certainly, muscled up as much as someone whose stunt double would be made of pipe cleaners can be, but nobody ever would accuse Gordon of looking like a professional athlete. He was always the baseball player whom the uniform looked like it wanted to swallow whole.
There was a safeness about him, one furthered with a bright smile flashed liberally, though by now it should be evident that neither the pearliness of a man's teeth nor the composition of his body reveal what's inside of it. In the case of Gordon, it was two types of synthetic testosterone. Not even the safest bets are immune from the drug testing of Major League Baseball and the 80-game suspensions that accompany the ones that come up positive.
to convince the reigning National League batting champion with a $50 million guaranteed contract to use, the next level of potential punishment likely to go beyond what the union that protects players believes is reasonable, the players themselves wondering aloud whether something as fundamental as guaranteed contracts or due process should be so fundamental, the quicksand of drug hysteria churning as it's wont to.
PEDs turn people into whirling dervishes of morality, particularly in cases like Gordon's, where the money and the batting title and the fact that he
drove in the game-tying run for the Miami Marlins about an hour before his suspension and the sterling reputation –
No, not him, he seems like a good guy – coalesces into a big, bulbous ball of disappointment. Or sadness. Or however you care to phrase it when perception doesn't dovetail with reality and the disbelief can cause a blip on the Richter scale.
The Catch-22 doesn't escape those at MLB who chase and prosecute drug users with the fervor of Eliot Ness. Vowing to clean up the game means taking down big names, and while Gordon isn't anyone's idea of a superstar, he is, inside the baseball world, more than just a name.
He is the son of Tom "Flash" Gordon. He is a former
Los Angeles Dodgers prospect who made an All-Star team, got traded to the Marlins, made another All-Star team and complemented his batting championship with a stolen-base title. He is the recipient of a five-year, $50 million deal this January, one for which he'll still reap about $48 million because the suspension docks him just $1.63 million in salary over the 80 games.
He is, as much as anything, proof that they will never learn – they being baseball players. Multiple sources told Yahoo Sports that Gordon plans on taking responsibility for using the exogenous Testosterone and Clostebol in a statement expected to come out Friday morning, and it's easier to accept than the excuse peddled by recently popped
Toronto Blue Jays outfielder
Chris Colabello, who
sounded like O.J. Simpson vowing to find the real killers.
The tale of Colabello – independent league hero-turned-big leaguer at 29 years old and now raking at 32 – was, like Gordon's, one of those cool stories that, not to get all saccharine or anything, felt good. Collabello persevered when no one believed in him. Gordon worked from a 144-pound nothingburger into a 171-pound man. They were good stories. And that's all they were.
Worse for baseball than the suspensions themselves are the collateral damage they cause. Stephen A. Smith can go on TV,
practically accuse Jake Arrieta of using steroids and blame the fact that others in baseball did, which would be like accusing all people on TV of being bumbling foofs because Stephen A. Smith happens to be one whose issues with logic foment this uncomfortable existence baseball lives.
No matter how vigilant, how committed to busting users MLB may be, how the usage pales compared to other sports with less rigorous testing, baseball is and will for the foreseeable future continue to be regarded as the sport with the steroid problem. The consequences of inaction years ago are like baseball's tattoo of a long-since-gone boyfriend's initials.
Laser therapy isn't taking them away. Baseball doesn't know what can. For all the players scared to test positive – and that list, believe it or not, is plenty large – some still weigh the risk and use understanding the consequences. The stigma and gossip aren't exactly a grand concern when front offices reward users with contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. And however much pressure comes from individual players to consider voiding the multiyear deals of players who test positive, the MLB Players Association understands that's the sort of Pandora's Box nobody dare open.
Gordon had his money when the testing caught him, and that's the most puzzling part of it: The beloved batting champion with the guaranteed scratch still used. What can baseball say to that? What can fans say to that? Only one thing comes to mind.
How sad.
