It's Not Easy Being a Baseball Player

Raul Ibanez started off this year hot and the media wondered if he was on steroids. Everyone looks for dirt on Albert Pujols who has to continually defend his name. So it was only natural that people would take a chance to try to soil Mariano Rivera's good name.

The culprit was a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim blog named "Halos Heaven". They tried to break down frame by frame how Mariano Rivera supposedly spit on the ball. The blogosphere and Twitter were up in arms over this. How could he? Is that how he did it all these years? Is that why his cutter moves so much.

Major League Baseball came to Rivera's defense and said they had reviewed the video and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Then a Deadspin reader (and Angels fan) found out the only thing that had been doctored was the frame-by-frame that Halos Heaven had used to compile the Rivera spitball story. Joe Girardi was asked about it during a press conference today but just laughed while pointing out--correctly--that the spitball makes the ball move all over the place while Rivera's patented cut fastball moves in exactly one direction.

Rivera's next appearance will be his 1,000th game in the Major Leagues between the regular season and the playoffs. All of those 999 games were televised. All 999 had video of him before he threw his pitches. And zero had any proof of him doctoring a ball with his spit.

I know that there is a reason to distrust baseball players. Alex Rodriguez told Katie Couric he had never done performance enhancing drugs. Rafael Palmeiro wagged his finger and told a Congressional panel that he was not a steroids user. Hell, Miguel Tejada was charged with perjury when he refused to admit about his PED use under oath.

So there is a reason to distrust that people are actually as clean as they seem to be. But we live in America where people are innocent until proven guilty. Mariano Rivera plays the game correctly and deserves the same benefit of the doubt.