J.C. Romero, Phillies reliever is hit with 50 game suspension

January 6, 9:53 AMSports ExaminerPaula Duffy

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Sports Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Did you notice the lack of headlines this past season about suspensions for violation of Major League Baseball's policy against performance enhancing drugs?

Today we have a rare announcement about the suspension of a significant player on a team's roster, and not just any team. The Phillies, reigning world champs have lost a stalwart out of their bullpen, J.C. Romero for 50 games.

Romero won two games for the Phils in their triumph over the Tampa Bay Rays and will have to wait until late May or June to help his team. He isn't being quiet about it all. In fact he is livid and screaming.

As we saw in the NFL, over-the-counter supplements can hide banned substances by not listing them on labels. The NFL's position is that players are responsible for what they put into their bodies and have been warned. I guess MLB is saying the same thing.

Romero is mad on two accounts:  1) he didn't "cheat" according to him since he didn't know what he was taking; and 2) he doesn't want his team's achievement to be tainted in any way.

It's been a long while since drug suspensions were a regular part of stories coming out of baseball and it's been nice. Somehow we were able to break our addiction to ridiculous numbers of home runs being hit by average players.

Even Congress is satisfied that the MLB policy is sufficient to keep the game clean. It had some left over questions that arose last year during the review of the Mitchell Report. It was intimated that MLB's policy wasn't airtight, that it tipped players off back in 2004 about timing of tests and might have been halted for a period of time.

Last week Congress gave MLB a clean bill of health on that score. Just in time for MLB to point to the lack of players caught doing bad things. And just in time to show that even stars will be punished. Unfortunately for Romero he is complaining at the wrong time.

Philadelphia Phillies Examiner, Pat Gallen posted last night on the subject, right here