Opinion: What’s Arte <i>doing</i> about Gary Hormones, Jr.?
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This week’s Dust-up, between Mat ‘Halos Heaven’ Gleason and New York Sun baseball writer Tim Marchman, springs from the curious case of Angels center fielder Gary Matthews, Jr., who stands accused of ordering up Human Growth Hormone in 2004, before it was banned in baseball. Angel owner Arte Moreno has made harsher and harsher statements about his $50 million man, basically demanding that he make a full public statement (presumably using his own mouth) before Opening Day, or face as-yet unarticulated consequences. Today’s installment chews on what those consequences can, will and should be. Excerpt from the prosecution (Gleason):
By equating association with illegal and/or banned substances as an issue of corporate branding, Angel management is setting up a new paradigm whereby egregious employee behavior is addressed outside the context of civil rights and in terms of economic impact. The interpretation of certain morals clauses in the General Agreement could bypass notions of player privacy and get to the heart of the matter: Baseball is for the fans to have heroes. Cheaters associated with a particular franchise diminish the market value of the team. The goal must be to affirm that player improprieties are grounds for terminating previously guaranteed contracts -- I believe Arte Moreno is the one man best positioned to stand up against the madness that is the glory-hog greed of Performance Enhancing Drug users masquerading as civil rights marchers.
And from Marchman’s defense:
So the question of what Moreno will do is easy to answer: He won’t do anything, because there’s nothing he can do, and that will hold even if photos surface of Matthews grinning and giving a thumbs-up while injecting himself with a big needle marked ‘This is HGH for which I got a shady prescription from a quack doctor.’ There’s a legal framework within which ballplayers can face penalties from the game for using drugs, and that framework doesn’t give Moreno the power to do anything, in this instance, except huff and moan about the unfairness of life. If he doesn’t like it, he can lobby his other owners to try and get the players to agree to change the legal structure of the game during the next labor negotiations. I’ll pitch a perfect game for the Mets before that happens.