What Can Brown Inject In You

The Scrap Of Scraps

Tonight, the big story in MLB is another dose of who got connected to the infamous Biogenesis clinic, and this will lead to a fresh round of tedious Hell In A Handbasket / Legalize It posts... but that's not where I'm going here. Instead, I'd like to roll out the list of guys who have been implicated to date:

Everth Cabrera, SS, San Diego
Jordan Norberto, LHP, Oakland
Fernando Martinez, OF, Houston
Fautino De Los Santos, RP, San Diego
Cesar Puello, OF, New York Mets
Melky Cabrera, OF, Toronto
Alex Rodriguez, 3B, New York Yankees
Nelson Cruz, OF, Texas
Francisco Cervelli, C, New York Yankees
Ryan Braun, OF, Milwaukee
Ysmani Grandal, C, San Diego
Gio Gonzalez, LHP, Washington

You don't have to be much of a linguistics expert to see what these guys have in common, do you?

There were 856 players on the opening day rosters in 2012... and just over 28%, or 243, were born outside of the United States. Once you pull out the Canadians, Japanese, Australians, Italians (seriously?), South Koreans and Taiwainese, you whittle that down to 207, or just over 24%.

And yet every single one of these guys is either brown or Braun (and Braun is linked due to his time at the University of Miami as a collegian).

Which leads me to the following mean and cynical questions.

Do we believe that there is something endemic to the character of Hispanic players that makes them more desperate, more ambitious, more willing to take the risk and long-term health problems involved with PED abuse, or

Are these guys simply using a PED pusher that isn't as good, discrete or un-dectable as the ones the white players are using?

My money is on the latter. But I'm a suspicious person by nature when it comes to the universality of cheating.

But if you'd like to start whistling past the graveyard of why white PED abusers don't get found out until after they are out of the game, while Hispanics get pinched in their 20s...

Well, it's not as if MLB has built a sterling reputation on all things PED, have they?