Thursday/Friday BP: MLB drug testing continues, despite ongoing lockout

Good morning, baseball fans!

And boy, do I have some infuriating content for you this morning. As we’re all painfully aware, the Major League Baseball owner-initiated lockout has been going on for about six weeks now. Which means not only are baseball activities suspended, but players who are rehabbing cannot even access team facilities or resources to help them rehab to be able to continue playing for said team.

You know, injuries caused by doing their job as baseball players. Kind of feels like a worker’s comp issue to me. But I digress. Because it gets worse.

See, the players can’t access the facilities of the teams they work for. But MLB can still access the players and force them to take drug tests.

It’s the hypocrisy for me. Or perhaps, the audacity. MLB acts like the players don’t even exist during the lockout, wiping them from their website and live content, locking them out of all team facilities, basically treating them like those of us who were furloughed during the pandemic were treated. Like, yeah, you still technically work here, but not right now.

But you know what I didn’t have to deal with? Drug tests. My company didn’t just randomly call me up and say “go pee in this cup, but don’t come into the office and we’re not paying you.”

At every step of this entire process, MLB keeps showing its hand more and more and it’s an ugly one.

Old, random MCC article for you to read

Since I talked a bit about how the 2022 season could be affected in Monday’s BP, I just want to throw a shout out to Brady for how he covered the lack of a season during the early months of what would have been the start of the 2020 season. So I wanted to highlight some of that.

Hypothetical recap: Oh wow, the Giants won (Brady Klopfer - May 29th, 2020)

How many days has it been since the owners locked out the players?

44 horrid days. But at least the days are getting longer now.