Wednesdays with Brownie: Why Bartolo is everyone’s favorite PED offender

One of the New York Mets pitchers on Monday wore his Bartolo Colon T-shirt, because everybody loves Bart, because he’s old and his body is, like, molten and he is still playing baseball capably. Also, chances are he played for your favorite team at some point over the past 19 years and while there probably wasn’t suspended for cheating.

“In honor of the day,” the pitcher in the T-shirt said, as Colon was the National League’s co-player of the week, with Chicago’s Ben Zobrist. The shirt read, “Big Sexy,” and the neon illustration had Bart in full glorious swing, batting helmet tumbling rakishly from his head.

That Bart, so funny and loveable.

Did you know he hit a home run Saturday?

It’s true. First ever. Forty-two years old, almost 43, his strikeout and walk rates as a pitcher have never been better, his ERA is under 3, and now he’s hitting home runs.

He’s everyone’s favorite, let’s say, 300-pound snuggle toy. Ol’ Bart, better than ever.

And, well, good for him, I guess. Seems like a reasonably nice fellow, beloved by teammates, small children and puppies. Mentors the younger players. Maybe even makes his own clothes. Did his time according to the Joint Drug Agreement rules. Returned to make a living, not unlike the rest of the Biogenesis posse except, maybe, for the guy who owned the joint, Anthony Bosch. He just got out of jail.

This isn’t Bart’s fault, but it seems the proliferation of frauds has worn us down. A guy gets banged for 50 or 80 games and for a day or two we wonder where the game’s gone wrong, and for the next three months we treat it like a blown knee. No apologies required. None expected. A few years later and the, let’s say, 300-pound guy is a physiological marvel, throwing 91 and hitting home runs in a game meant for the young and fit. It’s like a tiny miracle, assuming the same miracle keeps happening in the same place. After a while it probably loses its miracle status.

Those are the rules. Players cheat and serve their unpaid leave. Teammates call them family. Brothers. They forgive. They forget. When’s the next game?

Once, the punishment for being discovered to have chemically worked the system was 10 days. Ten’s not even long enough for most drugs to clear. Yet the aim of MLB’s first drug policy was not financial ruin or months of inactivity or even to ensure a violator’s return to human standing, but humiliation. It would be enough to be exposed as the guy who sat on his couch and plunged a needle into his thigh, to the detriment of the game and his fellow players. No one would want that. The shame.

Today, it’s 80 games, and anybody look humiliated yet?

Twenty-one years ago dozens of professional baseball players crossed the players’ union’s picket line. They had their stories. They had their families to support. They made their decisions. And when the strike was over, most were unwelcome in the union and, in many cases, their own clubhouses. They were scorned. Their names were left off commemorative merchandise. They did not receive licensing checks. Why? They’d forgotten their place in the union (even if they, as minor leaguers or amateurs, weren’t members to begin with) and placed themselves over the greater good. Over their “brothers,” or future “brothers,” and those who’d cleared that path.

How is a dose of laboratory testosterone any different?

Players who are considered leaders – good standing, substantial service time, well decorated – have complained recently about the policy. The current system is not enough of a deterrent. The appeals process is too long. The contracts are ill gotten.

So, as a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is being negotiated, are the cheaters the men they want standing beside them? Should they forever benefit from the work, the choices and the consciences of the majority? Does that sound fair?

It is, after all, the players’ union. They can decide just how sexy they want to be.

A WEEK BEHIND:

The Detroit Tigers had the appearance of a team with worst-to-first possibilities, because they had healed up and added an ace and a left fielder and what looked vaguely like a bullpen. They weren’t, as it turned out, going to keep up with the Chicago White Sox over the first six weeks, but 14-10 on May 1 was a decent start. No damage, as they say.

Ten days later, the Tigers were sitting on 15 wins, and all the crummy stuff they’d fixed over the winter was crummy again, and they’d lost seven games in a row before winning Tuesday night in Washington, and Brad Ausmus was taking questions about job stability – his own included, and what was in front of them was a road trip through D.C. and Baltimore.

After being swept in Cleveland, where they allowed 20 runs in three games, and at home against the Rangers (another 23 runs let in), followed by Monday night’s meltdown in D.C., the Tigers, Ausmus and GM Al Avila seem to be looking at all the familiar issues again. Start with a bullpen allowing a .274 batting average, work backward from there, and soon you’re likely to find the limit of Mike Ilitch’s patience.

A WEEK AHEAD:

So, a little life from the Houston Astros.

They’ve won five of eight games, a short run of decent baseball greased by three games against the Minnesota Twins and a 10-game homestand. Even in their breakout 2015, you knew the Astros weren’t all grown up quite yet, given their 33-48 road record. They are 4-11 on the road in 2016 (where their team ERA is near six) and the raised eyebrows persist. Last July 3, they were 48-34 and leading the AL West by five games. Since? They are 51-62. That’s a lot of mediocre (and still one steady inning from playing in the ALCS).

What lay ahead is four games in Boston and three in Chicago against the White Sox, starting Thursday night at Fenway Park with Dallas Keuchel against David Price.

Meantime, sometimes it’s easier to chase something great than to live with the expectations of greatness.

SAW IT COMING:

For the first time since he broke their shortstop’s leg in the division series, Chase Utley is on the field against the New York Mets this week, and the subject of retribution is popular with everyone but the people who would have a stake in it.

Ruben Tejada, the shortstop, is in St. Louis, playing part time and batting .190. Utley remains in L.A., and he’s a part-timer too. Given the slide in question was at worst aggressive by the standards of this era, and then all that both teams would have to lose in a beanball episode, the Mets would be best off leaving this one alone. Do they really want, say, Noah Syndergaard to smoke Utley, then have to stand in the batter’s box an inning later?

It would be a colossal waste of time and potentially a danger to their own season. Long view, fellas.

DIDN'T SEE IT COMING:

Stephen Strasburg is going to be a Washington National forever, or until the first opt-out (after year three), whichever comes first.

So the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Angels, Red Sox, whoever was thinking they’d spend some money next winter on starting pitching, may get to choose from this list:

Juan Nicasio, Rich Hill, Bartolo Colon, Mat Latos, R.A. Dickey, Brett Anderson, Andrew Cashner, Jorge De La Rosa, Scott Feldman, Ivan Nova, Jake Peavy, Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson.

There’s more, but you get the idea.