Today I received this e-mail from a reader:
Isn’t going on your suspicions like a juror in a murder trial thinking: “well, there’s no evidence this guy is guilty, but several of his friends are proven thugs, he looks like he might be a thug, so he must be guilty, so I’m voting ‘guilty.'”?
This was my response:
Mark, I strongly disagree. I’d equate this more to a murder trial where the accused, and those working on behalf of the accused, hid the bloody knife, the gun and the severed head beforehand so nobody could find them—then argued, “No evidence.”
That’s what this is.
Tell me why I’m wrong. The players union did EVERYTHING to cover this problem up, and it worked. Now they’re allowed to say, “No evidence”? Why?
•••
Honestly, I wish I’d just written that from Day One and moved on. Because that is exactly how I feel, and I don’t see how anyone can really argue the point. Baseball hid everything, then turns around and says, “Hey, there’s no evidence!” Well, of course there’s no evidence …
By the way, I’m sitting in a Manhattan Starbucks. When I lived in the city I loved sitting in its myriad coffee shops. Now, I’ll take the suburbs any day. This place is disgusting. The floor—disgusting. The smell—disgusting. The bathrooms—d-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g.
