The Editor’s Desk with Billy Brost: Padres Can Send A Clear Message

All I keep reading and hearing, is how San Diego Padres’ shortstop Everth Cabrera needs to get healthy, so he can return to the team for the final 2 weeks of the 2014 season. I’m also hearing about how he needs help, and treatment and blah blah blah. Really? You tell me, in your entire life, name five people you actually KNOW who are ADDICTED to marijuana? It’s nonsense and it’s more excuse making from a franchise than can’t condone this type of behavior. This isn’t the NFL, nor the NBA, where marijuana use is much more the norm than the exception. I remember a decade or so ago when a former Heisman Trophy winner cried the blues about his “addiction” to green bud.

I didn’t buy it then, and I’m not buying it now. This isn’t heroin. This isn’t crystal meth, nor is it cocaine or alcohol. This is, and always has been, a recreational drug, that also happens to work for pain relief and medical treatments of other serious issues such as glaucoma and cancer. I personally, do not partake. I’ll take a scotch and a cigar any day, but I don’t crack down on those who I know smoke. My issue with Everth Cabrera isn’t that he smoked. He’s an adult, that is his choice. My issue, is that he got behind the wheel of a vehicle impaired, and put not only his own life, but the lives of everyone in his vicinity at risk because he’s a blockhead. Marijuana is legal in two states, and that list could be growing in the next few years. The government can regulate it just as they do tobacco and the aforementioned alcohol. Everth Cabrera doesn’t need rehab, treatment, or understanding. He needs his ass whipped for not using common sense. He needs to serve about 90 days in the can, and about 1000 hours of community service, picking up trash off the side of the freeway or something similar that is just as degrading.

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It was a head up butt moment for the Padres shortstop. He should be done for the season, and he should also forfeit the remainder of his season’s salary. Sorry dude, you make stupid mistakes, you should lose what you worked so hard to earn. You can come back next season and try it again. Speaking of next season, since we now know that Cabrera likes to smoke, he should be subjected to urine, hair, and blood samples as the discretion of the Padres, not MLB. As long as Everth Cabrera dons the blue and brown, he is Padres’ property, represents the franchise–both on and off the field. This is a chance to humiliate, and to educate. When you’re in the public eye, like it or not, you’re held to a higher standard than Joe Sixpack who got popped for smoking or drunk driving. The Padres, led by new G.M. A.J. Preller can use this opportunity to send a clear message to the rest of the organization: making bad decisions that put your own, and others lives at risk, along with making the organization and baseball look bad, will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

And while Cabrera is at it, he can take Cameron Maybin and anyone else who might be using and hasn’t got caught yet to the community service office with them. It’s ridiculous how these players behave. Grow up.

Keep the Faith.