We Don't Need No Stinkin' Due Process

There’s a rumor out there that there’s still a chance Barry Bonds could get indicted, convicted, thrown in jail and have his career ended. This is a nice little dream, but there’s two problems: It’s really nothing more than a rumor, and there’s no way it could happen before Bonds breaks Henry Aaron’s record of 755 career home runs.

But here’s the thing: Baseball doesn’t have to wait.

Due process and the presumption of innocence is for a courtroom. If a professional sport wants to set its own standards of how much evidence is necessary before punitive action is taken, it’s free to do so. For example:

* The NFL can suspend, or even ban, Michael Vick based on its own investigation of dog-fighting on his property, even if he’s never convicted or indicted of a crime. And by the way, is Vick an insomniac who spends his long lonely nights thinking up new and unique ways to get into trouble? Because that’s about the only thing that would make his life make sense.

* The Bears can cut Tank Johnson for being arrested at 3 a.m. for driving with traces of alcohol in his system, even if he’s below the legal limit. (You see? There really is a Chicago connection to all of this.) To be certain, Tank got a bad break on the specific inicdent that preceded his firing, but the string of events that led to this one being a fireable offense were entirely his own fault.

* The NBA could have fired referee Tim Donaghy, if he hadn’t resigned, for gambling. They also could have fired him for fixing a game, but I want to be crystal-clear here that any athlete or official can be fired merely for gambling on any sport. This one gets its own entry, seen below.

* The NFL can suspend Pac-Man Jones for repeatedly being in the middle of gunfights outside of strip clubs, even if he’s not pulling the trigger. (Or firing his gun, as it were.)

* Major League Baseball can and should ban Scott Olsen, for his body of work.

* Duke can drop its lacrosse team merely for having a party with strippers, which is entirely legal. This one’s a little tricky, because if you started dropping sports teams for hiring strippers you would have to drop every sports team at every Division I college, but you get the point.

And if you don’t, the point is this: Nobody has a birthright to play professional sports. Your employer and mine can put restrictions on us allowing them to fire us for doing things that are bad for business, even if those things aren’t illegal. Pro sports leagues have the same leeway, and because of their visibility, sometimes that means really stringent restrictions.

If the NFL or any other sports league doesn’t want it players associating with gamblers, gangsters, gun runners, drug runners, drug addicts, hookers, strippers, shysters, women of ill repute or crooked real-estate developers, that’s the NFL’s call. And if an athlete doesn’t like it, they always have the option of shoveling shit for 8 bucks an hour like the rest of us.