MLB Needs To Institute ‘Zero Tolerance’ PED Testing

Today’s column from CBS Chicago

(CBS) I love Major League Baseball.

But Major League Baseball is wearing me out.

Every time we think the sport has made significant headway in its war against performance-enhancing drugs, a Ryan Braun or an Alex Rodriguez rears his duplicitous head. Again.

And then we’re back to questioning everybody.

So deeply has chemically-enhanced cheating infested our national pastime that New York Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira said last week he thinks there’s nothing that can be done to cure it.

“I don’t think it’ll ever go away,” Teixeira told the New York Post about illegal PED usage, before the Yankees played Baltimore in a spring training game. “It’s just like taxes. The IRS can do everything they can. People are going to cheat on their taxes. The IRS can do everything they can to try to stop it. It’s not going to be 100 percent perfect.”

Maybe not, Mark. But MLB could still try harder first, couldn’t it? It could get 100 percent tough and institute a penalty that’s 100 percent permanent. We could call it the “One Strike, And You’re Out” rule and it could declare that if a MLB player tests positive for PEDs just once, he is immediately suspended from the sport – for life.

If you want to scare baseball straight, that’s how you do it.

Or try to do it, at least.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com

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