Bill Plaschke is Dumb. Really Dumb.

We all know DUI is bad, all except for MLB, according to Plaschke.

Yeah, MADD is mad, and I don't blame it. Baseball struts around the national stage fighting steroids, then slips into the shadowy wings to embrace alcohol. Baseball will suspend a player for 50 games if he plays while juiced, yet zero games if he drives while drunk. Baseball has rid the clubhouse of all performance-enhancing drugs, yet continues to serve its players beer.

What's really awesome about Google's Blogger is that I copied 4 1-sentence paragraphs, and it automatically corrected that and turned it into one paragraph. Another thing I noticed is that Plaschke apparently doesn't seem to think that PED's matter with regard to cheating and the integrity of the game; the way the article is written, he seems to imply that we regulate against steroids to protect kids from destroying themselves. But I digress.

Plaschke makes a huge point here that the greatest demon in MLB is giving players free alcohol in the clubhouse. Now, if anything, this seems really to be quite pointless. Why would it matter if a player has to pay for a beer when his minimum wage is $400,000 a year? Is this really supposed to make a difference? Are we to believe now that if we forced players to leave the clubhouse that all DUI would be eliminated? After all, Tony LaRussa (who Plaschke mentions) got drunk away from the clubhouse, at a restaraunt. Should restaraunts not serve alcohol to such folks? We still haven't gotten to how one is innocent until proven guilty, but the argument here is weak enough.

But there is something more bizarre about this. Plaschke cites the death toll from drunk driving anually:

At last count, the annual ratio was about 12,000 to 1.

So 12,000 people a year die from DUI. You know what that means? There are 750 MLB players but 12,000 people a year die from DUI, so each MLB player is responsible for the death of 16 people a year. By comparison, the two Columbine killers killed 15 people including themselves, only 7.5 people per year. That is, of course, if Bill Plaschke is right and all sports-related DUI is caused by players.

We know of course, this is worthless drivel. The fact of the matter is that if anyone is responsible, it's the sports fans who do it, particularly in football. Football tailgaters will show up early enough to get drunk before the game even starts. At all kinds of sports games, you can just keep buying beers to stay intoxicated all game. If we really wanted to stop DUI at sporting events, why not ban alcohol for sale to the public? If you're serious about stopping DUI, don't be cheap.

But that's just it; people will spend a lot of money to get drunk while watching the game. At upwards of $6-7 per beer, people still managed to get smashed during a baseball game. When you have that going on, why would it matter that players can get free beer in the clubhouse. Can't intoxicated fans also potentially drive drunk, and doesn't the crowd of 20,000-50,000 matter more than a few?

Of course, maybe instead of alcohol prohibition (which America already tried), people should just look for ways to control themselves, and be more responsible. Maybe increase punishments for DUI. But look, 12,000 people a year are not dying because of MLB.