Jacobs Positive HGH Test is Only Good If Instituted at MLB Level

And just like that, Major League Baseball has its fall guy.

After years of puffing out their chests and saying that they were doing everything to control the usage of performance-enhancing drugs, dancing around the political games, and appeasing the player's union, it finally seems like Bud Selig and his cronies have seemingly stepped up to the plate.

Mike Jacobs, a former starting first baseman for the Mets, Marlins, and Royals, and most recently a 30-year-old minor-leaguer in the Colorado system, has tested positive for Human Growth Hormone. The positive test has resulted in a 50-game suspension and Jacobs has been consequently released by the Rockies. As reported by USA Today, it is the first positive test in North American professional sports.

Congratulations Mr. Jacobs, your official new position is the sacrificial lamb. Enjoy!

As someone that has been following baseball and diligently covering it during and after the eruption of the steroid scandal, it doesn't shock me in the least that the first person to take the fall is a washed-up former player with no shot at ever reaching the big club again. Sure, they can play it off as someone who was once promising trying to revive a stagnant career, but the fans are smarter than that.

We know that Jacobs was never going to figure into any club's future, but his failure of the test sure makes good headlines doesn't it? Bud Selig and Donald Fehr can now stand up proudly at a press conference tomorrow morning and yell to the world that their testing is successful. They can praise the labs for helping them get theirs off the ground before the NFL, NHL, and NBA, showing their commitment to curing the epidemic that has cost their sport dearly.

Fact is, Jacobs is just a little fish and the fans know it. His Hall of Fame candidacy is not going to be called into question because of this. He isn't challenging any records set forth by the game's forefathers and decimating the sanctity of the game itself. No, he's just a face on the side of the milk cartoon to flaunt to the press and to the other players; a deterrent to all that's been bad in the game over the last 30 years.

No, the only true way to make this meaningful is to use it to push back on the Player's Union. With the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire at the end of this year, there couldn't be a better time to introduce testing on the Major League level and make it a truly conclusive test. Once you test at the Major League level, you're finally working to solve the problem instead of tiptoeing around it.

Only when that's said and done can you go all Richard Nixon and proclaim yourselves the saviors of the game.

Sources:

• - Mike Jacobs Positive HGH Test Is First, USAToday.com
• - Baseball to Begin HGH Testing, MLB.com