Tatis Jr.'s absence highlights baseball's ever-growing capacity for self-sabotage

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. earned an 80-game suspension last week after testing positive for a steroid called Clostebol, and he says he flunked the drug test because of the ointment he used to treat ringworm.

As performance-enhancing drug excuses go, it beats Shelby Houlihan's tainted burrito defence. Meat from roided-up hogs doesn't permeate the food supply, and the odds that an authentic food truck will mistake it for beef are beyond remote. At least Clostebol does actually show up in skin creams, so maybe Tatis Jr. isn't hustling us on that front.

Still, common sense says using any medication whose name ends in "ol" or "one" without securing a therapeutic use exemption first is essentially volunteering for a drug ban. If somebody even offers you Pepto Bismol, call the team doctor first. Better safe than suspended.

But if Tatis Jr. made smart decisions, he'd already be back in San Diego. Instead he was in San Antonio, four games into a minor-league rehab assignment, testing out the wrist he broke in an off-season motorcycle crash. We know there were multiple crashes, because when a reporter asked Tatis Jr. when the accident happened, one of baseball's brightest young stars replied with his own question.

"Which one?"

One aspect of that context is that Major League Baseball has an aging audience, and is thirsty for ways to grow it. It's a 20th century relic trying to keep pace in the social media era, and players like Tatis Jr. — young, flashy, confident, and very, very, very good — are crucial to that goal. Tatis Jr.'s OPS (.975 in 2021) speaks to his overall