Giambi juice

He always looked shiny and zitty, like a pubescent 15-year-old whose voice flutters embarrassingly between high and low registers. His greatest mentor in the big leagues was Mark McGwire, the Oakland Athletics' other first baseman-DH from Southern California, who we now know at least skirted the line between growing his muscles naturally and unnaturally. Injuries threatened his well-being, and seemed to precipitate an early decline in productivity. They said he had a pituitary tumor too, hidden from the press by the team that protected him and his nine-figure contract. Now Jason Giambi appears to have admitted steroid use for at least the period 2001-2003, confirming (in some nauseating detail) what a lot of us suspected all along.

It's not clear what Major League Baseball will do with him, but the time has come for the New York Yankees to stop protecting Giambi and go after him where it hurts: his massive contract, which has turned into a huge albatross in the last two years. If pickup basketball was enough to dump Aaron Boone, using life-threatening and career-ruining drugs ought to be enough to void Giambi's deal.

This is not simply a vice. Lots of ballplayers have gotten messed up on recreational drugs or booze; they deserve a chance to clean themselves up. But Giambi's surge in productivity in the early years of this decade is the very basis for the contract he signed, and for that reason you could make a very strong case that the contract was negotiated under false pretenses. If you cheated your way through college and didn't really earn your degree, you could be fired. If you're a journalist who made up quotes in prize-winning stories, you can be fired. Giambi's credentials, i.e. his accomplishments with the A's, were obtained through cheating.

Everyone involved with baseball knows the sport has a steroid problem. If the Players' Union is to be taken seriously in the future, it must address the Giambis of the world not as victims of addiction who must be protected, but rather as frauds and cheaters who should be punished. The Union's members who play clean know this too.

And while ESPN's Jayson Stark suggests the Yanks have a shot at voiding the Giambi contract, SI's Tom Verducci says it's unlikely to happen. (Tim Kurkjian is on ESPN right now saying he doesn't think it's going to happen either.)