Melky Cabrera tests positive for stupidity

One of the dilemmas facing any serious professional athlete is "how should I respond when I inevitably test positive for performance-enhancing drugs?" Several tried and tested approaches are available to today's discerning cheats. We like to imagine them perusing a menu along the lines of Pulp Fiction's 50s diner.

First on the list is the depressingly unpopular 'David Millar': admit the offence straight away, accept the sanctions and become an unsanctimonious advocate for clean sport. Picture them rolling their eyes at his naïvety as they skip straight to the 'Carl Lewis': convince your country's feckless governing body that your three positive tests and those of your training partners should be ignored because they were all caused by over-the-counter cold medication, then profit from other cheats being properly punished (though this might be a little outdated now, as it famously didn't work for Alain Baxter in 2002). Those seeking a contemporary twist might therefore be tempted by the 'Alberto Contador' (or simply 'lo de siempre', as it's known among Spanish cyclists): blame contaminated meat and maintain your innocence while persuading your country's governing body to backdate the required ban to allow a quicker return to competition. Mature rich athletes seem to favour the quick and painless 'Manny Ramirez': simply run away (without paying) and retire to avoid any further sanctions. Recreational users, on the other hand, are rather partial to the flamboyant and fruitful 'Richard Gasquet': claim that you only ingested the drug by kissing someone at a party and get off scot free. Finally, there's always the 'Lance Armstrong' twelve-course bullshit banquet: allegedly manufacture a retrospective therapeutic use exemption after a first positive test, allegedly pay your sport's governing body to cover up a second positive test, slag off French cycling to discredit further positive tests from frozen samples, retire twice and switch sports, claim the anti-doping authorities are biased when most of your former teammates, coaches and doctors agree to testify against you, refuse to offer any defence in an 'unfair' forum and flounce off into the Texan sunset relying on credulous wristband cult acolytes to preserve a reputation built on lies while you try to pursue your laughable political ambitions. We imagine most self-respecting athletes would be put off by the health warning attached to that last option: it may prove difficult to swallow, and could take up to 13 years to fully digest.

Needless to say we thought we'd seen it all, but one cheat wasn't happy to follow the well-trodden path of his unscrupulous predecessors: he decided to order 'off menu', as it were. Step forward San Francisco Giants outfielder and forward-thinking doping pioneer Melky Cabrera. 

"Kids: drink milk, take drugs"

Cabrera was traded from the Kansas City Royals to the Giants over the winter. He'd played poorly for the Royals, but 'the Melkman' started to deliver with his new team and quickly established his position as the cream of their line-up. The improvement in his production was stunning - he compiled a ridiculous 51 hits in May alone, breaking Willie Mays' Giants record for that month which had stood for 54 years. Cabrera's batting average of .346 for the season still leads the Major Leagues today. This form saw him picked for the National League All-Star team in July and he won the All-Star Game MVP award by hitting the only home run that night.

On 15 August, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, Cabrera tested positive for an elevated level of testosterone. We're pretty devastated that creatine wasn't his drug of choice, as we'd love to have called him a creative creatine cretin. Even more incidentally, it's worth noting that he was only suspended for 50 games (or roughly two months of regular season baseball) by Major League Baseball under its ludicrously lenient rules, whereas the World Anti-Doping Agency best practice model recommends at least a two-year ban.

So what was Cabrera's response (via his agents) to his positive test? Did they confess his sins and meekly accept the proposed sanction?

No. They bought a website for $10,000 and redesigned it to look like it belonged to a fictitious supplier from whom Cabrera could claim to have bought a made-up supplement spiked with testosterone, so they could appeal his ban on the grounds that he had ingested the substance inadvertently.

While this might seem so stupid as to be a subconscious plea for more severe punishment, we can't help but applaud Team Cabrera's willingness to go the extra mile. Unfortunately, the entire ruse was scuppered within hours when MLB's investigators found that the site's hosting linked straight back to an employee of Cabrera's agents. That employee has since been banned by MLB, but no further sanctions have been levied against either Cabrera or his agents. It's almost as if the administrators were impressed by the scale of the scheme; as if they were handing out style points for artistic impression.

When it comes dodging a drugs ban and keeping yourself in the batter's box, it seems you might as well think outside the box. If nothing else, we salute Melky Cabrera for his ham-fisted accomplishments in light entertainment. A career in vaudeville awaits when his contract expires in November.