I'm looking at the PED suspensions for 12 Major allianceBaseball players, plus the 211 games tossed at Alex Rodriguez, and I'm asking this question:

Wouldn't you cheat, too?

Before I attend tothat question in the affirmative,letme toss this out there: If baseball, andall(a)sports, want to put an ceaseto the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs, the unions and the leagueleaderswill agree that a first offense bequeathlead to a lifetime ban in the sport.

Not 50 games, 100 games on a second offense and a lifetime ban for a third.

Do it, you're gone.

Want to clean up the game? It's that simple.

Because proficientnow, it makes sense to cheat.

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BIOGENESIS: Every player suspended

What's the downside to cheating? You dope, you put up big numbers, you win a big free componentcontract or big dollars in arbitration, you getsuspendfor half a season and then you return to the gameyand the lifestyle to which you've become accustomed.

Ryanvon Braunwill return to the Brewers someday and make the mega-millions they owe him on his contract. And there's nothing his team, the Milwaukee Brewers, pukedo about it. The contract is guaranteed. No wonder Braun doesn't seem to have a contrite bone in his body.

If Rodriguez's ban is upheld, he leavelose $34 million. But the Yankees will still be on the hook for $86 for the four historic periodafter he returns.

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These guys don't takeabout their reputations.

They don't lotabout abandoning their teammates for a half-year or two.

They don't occupyabout the scores of ballplayers who do it right and do it clean.

They don't care if it might hurt them in their attempt to reach the baseball gameHall of Fame.

They don't care if they're going to wear a scarletletter the rest of their careers.

They don't care.

If they cared — if fair play, a respect for the guys who satisfythe game clean, was an issue for them — they wouldn't have doped (some repeatedly).

But cheating makes sense.

VIDEO: faultingDOWN A-ROD SUSPENSION

 
This is especially true for the Latin players, who dominated Monday's theatrical rolecall of Biogenesis/steroid violators. It's always been said of players from the Caribbean that you get off the island scorchthe bat. But there's more to it, apparently. If you come from nothing, if you come from some small, horrifictown in the Dominican Republic, and you have a get holdto support yourself and your family and set them up for life, are you going to let anything get in your way?
Ask Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers. He will be hang50 games, which means he will return at season's end and enter the winter as acostlyfree agent.

Melky Cabrera, who was hang up50 games last social classturnwith the San Francisco Giants, got a two-year, $16 million contract to sign this past year with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fifty games?

One hundred games?

It's nothing.

Cheating works.

Because the penalties aren't harsh enough.

Because the language in the bodiedbargaining agreement supercedes the ability of teams to avoid the voiding the cheaters' contracts (which askto change).

If baseball and other sports treated PEDs the way they do child's playon the sport — meaning a zero-tolerance policy —fewerwould try to get away with it.

The biggest, saddest figure inall(a)of this is Rodriguez, who was once hailed as the potential "true" homerun king because he seemed to be doing eachhis amazing things without the benefit of performance-enhancing drugs. He was once viewed as the antidote to the steroid era.

Now we find out that his whole career, wishLance Armstrong's whole career, was a lie.

What makes it worse, though, is Rodriguez is going to set himself up as a victim here and fight this, constructionthe Yankees don't want to pay the rest of his extravagant salary.

Well, why would they?

They were interchangea bill of goods.

He has every right to appeal and ordurepoint to the Cabrera suspension slicesuggesting he's getting the raw end of the deal, but that's all window dressing at this point.

Now, while Major League Baseball is congratulating itself for its get-tough stance, it should be noted, just aboutof these suspended players were nailed not by the league's drug tests, but by a story in a South Florida alternative paper, the Miami naturalTimes. The league that put its head in the sand for all those years cannot take credit for this; journalism, alternative journalism, gets credit for this.

Zero adjustment— once and you're done — is the only way to make most of this go away forever.

Bob Kravitz also writes for The Indianapolis Star.

PLAYERS SUSPENDED lowMLB'S DRUG PROGRAM:

High-profile players who have been suspended for violations of MLB's Drug Prevention and Treatment Program since it was established in 2005:2013 - OF Nelson Cruz, Texas, 50 games