Thou shalt hire this cheater!

In the world of American professional sport, it is easy to assume that the teams, which are essentially privately owned for-profit companies, are run and managed with an iron fist. Well, at least as many metallic fists as there are teams. If the board wants to acquire a player badly enough, it will find the financial muscle to get him.

By the same token, if they do not wish to have a particular player on their team, for whatever reason(s), they must surely have the power to refrain from making him an offer.

So I was thoroughly taken aback when I read that the players' union for Major League Baseball is considering slamming various teams for collusion... to keep Barry Bonds out of their roster this year! Read all about it here in this article in the New York Times dated 19 March, 2008. Imagine, here is a self-admitted steroid user who now holds the home run "record". The quotation marks say it all. He holds the record on paper, but it will forever be tainted by his use of performance enhancing drugs. The drug problem is so deep today that it is almost no fun following the game anymore.

Why should players be entitled to astronomical salaries, if there is no market demand for them? Is MLB a communist entity that must ensure that all players, good and bad, cheaters and fighters, must get paid a few million a year to sustain their high-brow lifestyles?

Worse, these cheaters are being shielded and defended by their union! Does anybody know why there should be negotiations for drug testing? When was the last time the International Olympic Committee negotiated to reduce or remove a ban on a player caught using drugs? Still, the American definition of sport involves a lot of marketing jargon, and has nothing to do with ethics or fair play. Give what the crowds want to see. The ball flying out of the ballpark. If the players must inject themselves once in a while, so be it.

The players' union has some guts even to consider the collusion theory, let alone air it in public. In my view, this only strengthens the perception that Bonds is a cheat. I hail the teams that are keeping from making him a gigantic dollar offer. What the sport desperately needs is many more such decisions that will hopefully serve as a deterrent to druggies.