Yeah, lets cut the players hands off - that'll stop it! We all know Saudi Arabia is the country we all want to live in - look at the massive amounts of immigration they have, everyone wants to be there...oh wait, they don't have that? Never mind.

Seriously... When your aspiration is to be as fair and just as the Saudis... Vincent is really beyond caricature, ain't he?

Oy, if Fay Vincent is going to replace Marvin Miller as the guy whose opinion Murray Chass is always getting, then Miller's death is even more of a loss than I thought.

I guess the one function Vincent can serve in life is to make us feel better about Bud Selig. Imagine if they actually let this guy be the commissioner?

CUT THE HANDS OFF STEROID USERS, MR. PRESIDENT

Once in Riyadh I saw a Muttawa (religious policeman) chasing a girl down the street with a a bicycle chain for too-short sleeves. Bet you could do that to encourage taking a walk or something.

Ted Kluszewski wouldn't have stood for that crap!

Vincent favors a drug-testing rule similar to baseball’s rule prohibiting betting on baseball. Violate the rule once, and you’re out.

“The rule has worked,” he said in a telephone interview. “That deterrent really works. I think we’re going to come to it in baseball. Three bites at the steroids apple doesn’t work.”

There's one big problem with this, though: Everything is legal until it's illegal, and when it comes to PEDs that definition is constantly changing.

Betting is betting; there are no shades of gray, no changing the definition.

But PEDs? Andro wasn't considered a PED when McGwire had it in his locker; there's still debate about whether hGh really does anything worthwhile. Heck, even in the Olympics (model of virtue and "clean sport" that it is) didn't test for anything until a cylcist died in the 60's Olympics (ironically, his doping appears to have nothing to do with his death).

Kudos, TDF.

If Vicnent believes that bans for misconduct should be permanent, why did he allow George Steinbrenner allowed back into baseball?

One rule for owners, one rule for players.

I had no idea Hector Lopez was once convicted of robbery in Saudi Arabia.

“The rule has worked,” he said in a telephone interview. “That deterrent really works. I think we’re going to come to it in baseball. Three bites at the steroids apple doesn’t work.”

But two bites* would? The difference doesn't seem big enough to get that worked up over, or to put that much faith in.

*"Violate the rule once, and you’re out." only pertains to gambling on games where one had a duty to perform. Rule 21 specifies different penalties for different infractions.

The two sides have agreed to blood testing for the first time,...

I realize there's no reason for millionaires to give a shit about anyone else, but highly visible ballplayers agreeing to blood testing is going to make it easier elsewhere.

I realize there's no reason for millionaires to give a #### about anyone else, but highly visible ballplayers agreeing to blood testing is going to make it easier elsewhere.

Don't you mean harder? They gave up their personal privacy rights, what kind of example is that?

What's with the banning crap?

Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were given lifetime bans, and reinstated.

George Steinbrenner was banned, and reinstated.

Judge Landis banned players who held out, including a player who had a paycuts forced on him and refused to play asking for his release. He banned a player for playing in an exhibition game simply because some banned players were in the game. He banned a player for sending a drunken letter to a friend on another team saying he hated his manager so much he was willing to quit during the pennant chase.

“Who’s going to believe the players after Rose and Armstrong?” he asked, referring to Pete Rose, in whose banishment from baseball he was involved, and Lance Armstrong. “Some of them are telling the truth, but it’s difficult to believe them after everything.”

Is part of the many problems with Chass that he really doesn't understand that those people lying doesn't mean these people are lying? Is Chass married? When he reads that Ashton Kutcher cheated, does he start looking at his wife funny?

Is he capable of understanding that with a large group of people, some number of those people are going to be liars, or cheats, or whatever category you want to think of, and that's no reflection on everyone else; it is simply, all but inevitable?

Chass would have to show a pattern peculiar to ballplayers, and he'd be best off in this... campaign... to show that pattern is more extensive among them than it is for a general population. Thing is, I don't think his mind works that way.

I think some of what we take for willful neanderthal-like behavior is only the bafflement and anger from people who cannot understand how basic reasoning and induction works; they think that people who do are getting away with something, or being 'clever'. I don't think Chass understands how to look at a population wrt certain behaviors.

Vincent, though, raised another deterrent, the one that is used in Saudi Arabia to stop people from committing any kind of theft. Thieves, he pointed out, have their hands cut off.

“Petty theft doesn’t exist with the Saudis,” he said.

Would this work for bad writing, too?

I realize there's no reason for millionaires to give a #### about anyone else, but highly visible ballplayers agreeing to blood testing is going to make it easier elsewhere.

Don't you mean harder? They gave up their personal privacy rights, what kind of example is that?

Easier for authorities elsewhere to get blood testing done on folks.

Would this work for bad writing, too?

Nope, not that either.

MLB Network interviewed Ken Davidoff the other evening right after the Bosch "news" broke. Davidoff very frankly stated that you could provide for the death penalty for the first failed PED test and some guys would STILL use. The incentives and egos are just too great at the Major League level.

Alex Rodriguez could cut Manny Ramirez open at home plate and drink him before hitting a World Series-winning home run with his elbow, and he wouldn't be as big an embarrassment to baseball as the Steroid Inquisition has been. At least when the cretins on "Jackass" tried to beat the previous low in reckless, mindless outrageousness, somebody ended up taking a funny nutshot.

15: That's true. I have no counter.

Jim Abbott must have pilfered something when he was younger.

For the record (somebody's keeping a record right, it will save us the trouble of discussing this week after week, year after year), I would not be surprised to see the penalty for first-time violation going up to a full year. A couple of more aging clinic busts and there will be calls to "do something!" Most of the individual sports place a 2-year ban on the first violation.

Posnanski:

"Petty theft doesn't exist with the Saudis," Fay Vincent reportedly told Chass which is an excellent answer if the question is, "Did baseball owners entirely lose their freaking minds when they let Fay Vincent be commissioner of baseball?"

Antonio Alfonseca is the new market ineffeciency.

Mordecai Brown stole something, then put it back.