Let me first apologize for the late post. I cannot blame this on time or even on a bad memory. Quite frankly, it comes down to trying to figure out what to write. After finding a way to stretch baseball talk all winter, I finally hit a wall and struggled with something to write about. I hoped that by waiting until the morning, something would come to mind.

And low and behold...We have Curt Schilling.

The former Red Sox, Philly, and Diamondback right-hander is no stranger to opening his mouth. 

On Wednesday, during a radio interview with ESPN, the erstwhile former pitcher went into detail about an incident in the Red Sox clubhouse involving steroids. During the 2008 season, Schilling claims to have been approached by an unspecified employee of the Red Sox organization about the possibility of taking PED’s in order to extend his career.  Health issues had begun to catch back up to Schilling at that time and the thought was presented to him that if he took certain substances, that he could recover and regain some effectiveness.

Schilling has said he reported the incident to a team official, who in turn took the matter to Major League Baseball. The league acknowledged the fact in a statement on Thursday, “The club immediately notified us, we take these matters very seriously, and an investigation was completed.” There was no further mention of any penalties against the club, the player, or the employee accused during the incident.

And while the motives of such a conversation by Schilling are timed more as a way to draw attention away from his bankruptcy, they do show one thing; not all ballplayers operated on the low standards of others.

Schilling retired after the 2007 season, after making just 24 appearances due to a shoulder issue in June that kept him out for close to a month. With that in mind, the motivation to “fix” the health issue and extend his career would have been relatively great at the time.

With a solid postseason resume, Schilling would still need to overcome a 216-146 record to make the Hall of Fame. Despite the fact that wins are looked at differently by sabermatricians at this stage, win totals are still a gauge used by many of the voters when accessing a pitcher against the generations of pitchers that preceded him.

The urge to push past that may have been motivation enough for some players, yet Schilling denied it, perhaps due to some moral standing or perhaps because he felt his legacy (76.9 career bWAR, 11-2 Postseason record) without it was better served by letting his merits stand on their own.

Schilling’s may not have been the least abrasive personality to ever play the game. He may have made some questionable decisions in regards to his 38 Studios venture and he certainly isn’t winning any friends in the broadcasting world, but one thing you can never take away from Curt Schilling his appreciation for the history of the game. By doing the right thing here, Schilling did so with a watchful eye on the legacies of the players that came before him and chose to respect their contributions more than worry about his own. He chose to walk away before trampling on their memories.

We just wish that others could have done so as well.

Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez is already slated to miss most, if not all, of the 2013 with a second surgery on his hip. Did he really need news of his involvement in an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency and Major League Baseball on top of that?

According to the New York Daily News, the investigation centers around Anthony Bosch, a man based in Miami that has advised Rodriguez on nutrition, dietary supplements, and training. Bosch and his father, Pedro  Publio Bosch, are being investigated for possibly supplying illegal substances to ball players.

In 2009, Bosch's father was a central figure in the Manny Ramirez suspension after it became known that the subscription that Ramirez used to get the banned drug that resulted in his first breach of MLB's policy on performance enhancing substances.

Major League Baseball is interested in Bosch's possible roles in the the circulation of synthetic testosterone, HGH (Human Growth Hormone), and other drugs that have been making their ways into drug tests performed under the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Players including Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon, Marlon Byrd, Yasmani Grandal, and Carlos Ruiz have all received suspensions in recent months for violating the agreement.

This is also not the first time Rodriguez has shown up on the radar of either the DEA or Major League Baseball. In 2010, Rodriguez was questioned for his ties to Anthony Galea, a Canadian sports medicine specialist. Galea plead guilty in 2011 to trafficking mis-branded drugs for treating professional athletes. As part of his guilty plea, Galea has agreed to supply the names of his clients and their treatments.

At the time of the Galea investigation, it was determined that Galea only supplied Rodriguez with anti-inflammatory medication and treated him with platelet rich plasma therapy. Rodriguez was questioned by Major League Baseball, but was never suspended.

On February 24, 2009, Alex Rodriguez admitted to using steroids and other performance enhancing substances during the period of 2001-2003.

All and all, it is not shocking to see Rodriguez still popping up on baseball's steroid radar. The sudden degeneration of his hip and his inability to perform at his previous pace are both signs of prolonged steroid usage and the long term after affects of using. Whether anything comes out of this current investigation remains to be seen, but one could imagine that the New York Yankees will look at this seriously and consider all options in regards to voiding A-Rod's albatross of a contract.

Well, the votes are in and as some predicted, not a single player achieved induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday.

This year's class represented a tremendous challenge for voters, requiring each to use their ballot to not only determine worthiness of baseball immortality, but to also play push past speculation and determine which has cheated the game through the use of steroids. In the end, the BBWAA was not up to the challenge and failed to enshrine a single player.

It is a shame really, as some players were more than worthy, especially some of those that had hung around on the ballot for a few years. The different camps split the vote and in the end, no one gets honored. I do not envy those that cast their ballots, as there was no good ground to walk on. Either you admitted a cheater or you failed to admit some of the best to play the game.

However, it is worth saying that any privileged voter, and voting is a privilege, that failed to vote for a single candidate should have their right to vote revoked. There were five such ballots this year, (Howard Bryant of ESPN being one of them). None of these individuals are making a statement. They are simply undermining a process that they were lucky enough to be included in. If they don't want to vote, they can simply step aside for someone else.

Here are the final results, as well as some brief commentary on each:

Everywhere, there were sounds of praise after it was announced that Melky Cabrera would no longer be eligible to win the 2012 National League batting title. The people stood and applauded louder when it became known that Cabrera himself asked Major League Baseball and the Players' Association to waive a rule that would have granted him one additional hit-less at-bat, and thus the batting title.

I stayed in my seat.

Certainly, the request by Cabrera came as a surprise to most fans. Most of us had resigned ourselves to the fact that a convicted cheater would take home the NL batting crown. After all, he had the advantage of being able to sit on his .346 average while the competition behind him, Andrew McCutchen (.338) and Buster Posey (.335) would need a huge surge in order to catch him. Instead, Cabrera and his agent requested that rule 10.22a be waived in this circumstance. And then everything could be flowers and rainbows again in the world of Major League Baseball.

But did you catch that one piece that makes me doubt Cabrera's contrition?

That's right, Cabrera made the request, with his agent through the Players' Association. Contrition aside, I smell a rat.

Let's look at the evidence of the past here, just for a minute. Cabrera was suspended for 50-games on August 15th after a positive test for synthetic testosterone. He initially appealed the suspension and tried to build a case for himself by having an associate set-up a fake website and supplement product that he could attribute his positive test to. When his plan started to fall through, he removed his appeal before anything went public and then announced he was accepting his punishment by admitting to making a poor decision.

So pardon me if I am a bit skeptical that everything is on the up and up here.

Here we have a player in Cabrera that has two strikes against him; one for testing positive for a banned substance and one for trying to circumvent the appeals process by fabricating evidence. He fouled off strike three by dropping his appeal and admitting to his crime, but he was still in the hole 0-2 without a clue on how to stay alive on the next pitch.

By forfeiting the batting title, Cabrera is trying to put the ball into play. Even if it makes an out, he's hoping it is enough that his actions during the case are not so damning that they impact his appeal as a free agent this winter.

That's right, I'm coming right out and saying that this maneuver is simply a marketing campaign. Melky wants to rebuild his image so that he is not left out in the cold this winter. Even though he has likely forfeited $50+ million in salary, Cabrera still needs to give teams a glimpse that they should take a flyer on him and hope he is a changed man. This move is nothing more than playing politics.

Now it just comes down to who drinks the milk and gives him what he wants. Someone is bound to do it, but buyer beware, this product is sour.

Melky Cabrera is no longer the only high-profile drug suspension of the season.

Major League Baseball suspended Oakland Athletics right-hander Bartolo Colon for 50 games after Colon failed a mandatory drug test. His results showed higher than normal testosterone levels and after further investigation, Colon was found to have used a similar substance that earned Cabrera his ban.

After 2 season away from the game, Colon made an improbable comeback in 2011. Pitching for the Yankees, he went 8-10 with a 4.00 ERA and 135 strike-outs in 164.1 innings pitched. His velocity had returned a bit and he started 26 games for the first time since 2005. The performance was good enough to get him another deal in Oakland in 2012.

Colon followed up his stellar 2011 campaign with an even better year thus far in 2012, posting a 10-9 record, 3.43 ERA, and 91 strike-outs in 152.1 innings before his suspension. His name regularly came up at the trade deadline in regards to teams looking to add pitching for the home stretch, especially considering the A's apparent plethora of quality starting arms.

Well, the A's are going to be thankful for the return of Brett Anderson and the expected return of Dallas Braden, not to mention the availability of Dan Straily at the minor league level. They are going to really appreciate that depth with the loss of Colon, something they should barely feel at this point.

For the 39-year-old Colon, this likely closes the book on his career, improbable comeback or not.