A couple of quick baseball notes...

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see Alex Rodriguez beat out David Ortiz for the AL MVP award. The whole mindset against designated hitters as the MVP worked against Big Papi, and A-Rod ended up with 16 first-place votes to Ortiz' 11 (one Detroit writer voted for Vladimir Guerrero - go figure). I already laid out my reasoning for voting for Papi over A-Rod here. We Red Sox fans know who the real MVP is anyways.

Baseball finally got really tough with steroid offenders, as the union and the owners got together on a stricter policy. The new penalties are a 50 game suspension for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third. This is up from 10 days, 30 days and 60 days, with a lifetime ban coming only after five failed tests.

I'm really glad to see this. Losing almost a third of a season (and the accompanying pay) may finally be a real deterrent. There is no place in baseball for performance enhancing drugs and this is a big step in the right direction of stopping them.

Last item: The Kansas City Royals and Chiefs are holding the Jackson County Sports Authority over a barrell for over $500 million of improvements to Kaufmann Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium. The teams would pick up $70 million of the cost, with the taxpayers holding the bag for the rest. Amazingly enough, the Authority is having to go back for a second try at getting approval because - guess what? - the voters turned it down last time!

Anyone who has read Foul Ball and followed my blog through the Pittsfield experience last year knows what I think about government funding for sports stadiums. It's corporate welfare at it's worst, building stadiums for millionaire ballplayers and billionaire team owners. Hopefully the Kansas City voters will continue to refuse to take part in it.