Because “shame on you” stories virtually write themselves, the drug scourge is one of the best things that ever happened to baseball columnists. They wake up on the side of the angels, thwack the devil, and sleep like children.
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions about his innocence or guilt,” allowed Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We don’t have nearly enough evidence.”

So why was he writing at all?

Because, his column went on,
“we have more than enough circumstantial evidence to raise another doubting eyebrow at yet another suspicious athlete.”

The evidentiary standard for raising a doubting eyebrow is so extraordinarily low that I’d like to think no court takes it seriously but the one parents convene when cookies disappear and children are on the premises. But among journalists, even if there’s no proof, even if there’s no evidence, even if there’s only circumstantial evidence of evidence,

there’s an airtight justification for a column.