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Before Friday, Pete Rose was the only one living person that was banned from Major League Baseball. Now, you can add a second name to that list: Jenrry Mejia.
Mejia, a former closer for the New York Mets, had already been suspended twice for failed steroid tests and was in the middle of serving a 162-game sentence. But after his third failed test, the 26-year-old became the first player in baseball history to receive a lifetime ban for testing positive for performance-enhancing substances.
Being banned from baseball is an incredibly rare thing, and Mejia is now the answer to a trivia question about the first player to feel the wrath of the new steroid policies implemented by the league following the BALCO scandal of the mid-2000s.
Suspending players for performance-enhancing drugs only dates back to 2005, but Mejia was already one of only five players (along with Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Guillermo Mota, and Miguel Tejada) to be suspended for more than 100 games while being on a major league roster. He is now the only one of that group to receive his third strike. Mejia is also the first player banned from the game under commissioner Rob Manfred.
Mejia and Rose are the only two living people banned from the sport, but there are several from the days of commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis that are still serving bans posthumously, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the other eight players involved in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 (Manfred recently denied Jackson’s reinstatement despite a push from fans and family members to reinstate him).
Others like George Steinbrenner, Marge Schott, Ferguson Jenkins, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Steve Howe were all banned for various reasons at one point, but were all eventually reinstated to the game.
Mejia will likely apply for reinstatement under Manfred but even if he is approved, Manfred is unable to lift the suspension for two years. Mejia’s other option will be to take his case up with an arbitrator, who could reinstate him sooner than two years if he believes Mejia’s banishment was unwarranted (for the record, Mejia has denied taking steroids, so make of that what you will).
There are a host of minor league players who currently have two failed tests to their names, but Mejia somehow beat them to the punch as the first player banned for steroids after receiving all three of his failed tests within one calendar year.
Considering how much was on the line after his second failed test, you have to wonder what was going through Mejia’s mind when he took substances that got him banned from the sport for life. Was he too insecure that he could compete in the majors without steroids? Did he just think he would beat the system? Is he addicted to steroids or the effect they have on his body? Or did somehow, someway, he really not know he was taking PEDs like he claims?
Regardless, Mejia now joins an incredibly rare list that absolutely no one wants to be on. Something tells me that Rose isn’t entirely too thrilled to have company in the form of a steroid user, either.
