Last season, Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera was one of baseball's best stories. After blowing more than three times the legal limit after a domestic dispute with his wife in October, Cabrera underwent treatment, cleaned up his act and had a career season, finishing second in the AL MVP voting behind Josh Hamilton.
Just when you thought Cabrera had learned his lesson and turned a corner, he gets arrested for DUI last night in Florida and has the audacity to grab a bottle of scotch and drink it in front of his arresting officers. There is dumb and there is REALLY dumb. Right now, Cabrera is REALLY dumb.
The only question left now is: Should Cabrera be suspended? If Roger Goodell ran baseball, he would take away one quarter of Cabrera's season, like he did when Ben Roethlisberger was accused of rape in the offseason.
Both were arrested and in a professional environment, especially one where millions of dollars are at stake, you shouldn't be allowed to get away with this.
I don't think it's too much to suspend Cabrera for the first month of the season. Considering the Nick Adenhart situation, in which the promising Angels pitching prospect was killed by a drunk driver after a game almost two years ago, baseball knows the dangers of drunk driving first hand.
If Bud Selig doesn't punish Cabrera, it will send a terrible message. That message: Driving drunk is okay as long as you don't kill anybody. Cabrera is a multimillionaire just like Braylon Edwards; hire a driver and you don't have to worry about getting yourself into trouble.
If baseball doesn't suspend Cabrera, the Tigers should. But it's a tall order to ask any team to essentially forfeit its season by sitting its star player out for 25 games. As much as I like Cabrera as a player and believe he has limitless potential when clean, this incident proves that maybe he hasn't learned his lesson for the long run.
A suspension would be good for baseball's image and good for Cabrera too. Hopefully, it would prevent him from doing this again in the future, understanding that actions have consequences. Now it's time to wait and see if the MLB has the balls to suspend one of its brightest stars.
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