Mike Lupica: Hit them in the wallet

Gary Matthews, Jr.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, March 11th 2007, 3:48 AM


In the end, the Players Association in baseball, and its members, are really only passionate about one thing: Protecting guaranteed contracts, something they think should be covered by the Patriot Act. The Players Association used to stand for a lot of things, so many of them good and important.

Now they are security guards at the bank.

This isn't about the integrity of the game with them, no matter how much the people on the players' side say they want to clean up the sport as much as Bud Selig and George Mitchell and the Congress of the United States. This isn't even about players protecting their own good names.

This is about the money.

You know why Gary Matthews Jr. isn't saying anything about his alleged purchase of human growth hormone through an online pharmacy? Because he doesn't want to put himself at risk with the Angels, make some kind of mistake that would give the Angels a chance to back out of the $50 million contract they signed him to over the baseball winter when Matthews became a free agent.

Matthews doesn't want to get fired over drugs.

Guaranteed contracts will be the last great battleground between baseball and players still using drugs despite everything that has happened over the last few years, despite BALCO and "Game of Shadows" and Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, despite baseball being hauled in front of Congress, despite the George Mitchell investigation.


Mark McGwire

Despite all of it.

One of these days, and it might be soon, because Angels owner Arte Moreno looks like he might not be a good sport about what he knows about Gary Matthews Jr., some owner is going to fire a player for using drugs. After that they will let the Players Association and an arbitrator explain to everybody why the sport is supposed to treat players like tenured professors no matter what kind of conduct they engage in off the field, no matter what kind of rules they break.

Bonds didn't get the attention of players like Matthews, McGwire blowing his Hall of Fame chance in front of Congress didn't get their attention. A new drug testing program and harsher penalties, as harsh as there are in major professional sports, hasn't gotten their attention. Neither has former Sen. Mitchell's investigation. The players treat that with contempt and refuse to talk to Mitchell or his people.

Now, apparently, players think that stronger bodies and bigger contracts are just a mouse click away. And Matthews still thinks he doesn't have to explain anything to an employer scheduled to pay him $50 million. He has all the rights and Moreno has none. How does that work? I love Moreno now actually praising Jason Giambi for the way he handled himself after Giambi's name came out in leaked grand jury testimony from BALCO, talking about how Giambi at least seemed contrite.



Once again we are back to that: Jason Giambi, standup guy! His performance in public was as artful as Bonds' was in front of the grand jury. He wanted to show everybody how bad he felt, maybe even get them to feel sorry for him, all the while making sure he didn't say anything that would have given the Yankees a chance to void his huge contract.

Matthews doesn't even feel he owes the Angels or anybody else that. Why would he? He's got a contract. Up until now, it is those guaranteed contracts - some of them earned because of drugs - that seemed to be on steroids. One of these days an owner is going to challenge one of those contracts. And if the owner wins, maybe that will be the end of drug cheats in baseball.

A manager told me a few years ago that his team had a new way of evaluating players his team was thinking of acquiring. They measured all the usual things, velocity for pitchers, power and speed and throwing for position players, talked about how many "tools" a player had. But now, he said, in the modern world, there was one other evaluation to make.

About their tool kits.

"Do you think he's been using drugs?" the manager said.

The Angels weren't worried about Matthews, despite the way his career suddenly changed late in the game. So that is on the Angels. Still: How come Matthews has more rights than the owner here? Why can't Arte Moreno do what bosses in the real world do, and fire somebody for drugs?