Playing Doctor: The Miggy Mess

© David Hartman

     Jeff Passan, I'm calling you out.

     Baseball's annual spring training has barely begun, and one of its biggest stars already is making headlines.
     Off the field. For all the wrong reasons.
     Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera was arrested in Florida after a cop investigated a car with a smoking engine parked on the side of the road. Inside that car was Cabrera, allegedly legally drunk times three. So excited to see the officer was Cabrera that he toasted Florida's finest with a swig from his open bottle of scotch.
     It's the second time Cabrera has been arrested for doing stupid things while intoxicated. So we all know he's an alcoholic. Don't we?
     Passan thinks so, as do ESPN colleague Jayson Stark and a whole host of others in the "journalism" business who have weighed in on the Miggy Mess since the story broke last week.
Passan's column was particularly offensive. Of Cabrera: "He still refuses to admit that he is an alcoholic. He hid behind medical privilege rather than answer legitimate questions, such as why doctors recommended he rejoin the booze-soaked baseball life today rather than check in to a rehabilitation center."
     The primary target of Passan's righteous indignation is Cabrera's employer, the Detroit Tigers, who Passan believes are turning a blind eye to Cabrera's Passan-diagnosed alcoholism. To suggest the Tigers aren't taking Cabrera's situation seriously -- they have millions of dollars invested in the guy and his ability to perform -- is even sillier than Passan practicing medicine and psychiatry with a journalism degree.
     Is Cabrera an alcoholic? I don't know. I do know that alcoholism is a disease. It has a clinical diagnosis, one made by doctors. But it's diagnosed by real doctors, not the legions of cyberdoctors who line up to take their shots every time someone famous falls down.
     Passan and others tell you Cabrera is in denial. He can't get help until he admits he's an alcoholic, they say.
     If Cabrera is an alcoholic, then what the critics say is correct. But if he isn't? Why should he admit he's something he's not simply because Jeff Passan demands it?
     But....but....but....it's not his first offense! True. Just explain to me how that makes Cabrera any different from literally tens of thousands of frat boys (and girls) who get sloshed on Saturday and do stupid things with stolen farm animals, only to repeat the process the following weekend? Are some of the frat boys alcoholics? Surely. But for every one of them you show me who battles the disease after college and does the twelve-step tango to survive one day to the next, I'll show you five others who don't. They graduate, get real jobs, have real lives and leave the frat lifestyle behind. Simply, they grow up. And they're evidence that while doing stupid things in a drunken stupor might mean you have a disease, it doesn't necessarily mean you have a disease.
     The mitigating circumstance here is that save the sheep, no one really gives a rip about the frat boys. But Cabrera makes obscene amounts of money playing games on national television while the rest of us install microwave ovens and move color TVs for a buck, so he's fair game for vultures like Passan.
     I know these attacks are commentary, not objectivity. Still, Passan might learn a thing or two from his own writing: "...doctors recommended he rejoin the booze-soaked baseball life today rather than check in to a rehabilitation center..." Really? The experts -- real doctors -- who were charged with examining his situation decided it was better for Miggy to play ball rather than enter inpatient rehab?
     Maybe, Jeff, that's an intentional, telling gap in the HIPAA-curtained window into the expert diagnosis of Cabrera's problem. I know that's not what you want to hear. I know that doesn't sell as many web hits. But for Cabrera's sake, let's hope it's true.
     Play ball.