FanHouse JimBouton

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

As the No. 1 overall pick in 1990, Chipper Jones signed with the Braves for $275,000.

Even in today's dollars, that's about $450,000 -- or about 3 percent of Stephen Strasburg was guaranteed as this year's No. 1 pick.

And Jones agreed to his deal the night before the draft, while Strasburg came within two minutes of missing last Monday's deadline to sign.

"I think the only way that you're going to get kids signed and get them into the various camps is to put some kind of cap on it," Jones said. "I was always of the belief that you make your money at the big-league level."

That's how the teams want it too. When the current collective bargaining agreement is up in two years, Major League Baseball may pursue an NBA-style slotting system -- with signing bonuses locked in depending on how high a player is picked, as opposed to the current non-binding slot recommendations.

Jim Bouton, the former big league pitcher of Ball Four fame, has an interesting idea for how to future-proof baseball against players using the latest and greatest performance-enhancing drugs. From his guest-post on the New York Times' Bats blog:

1. To avoid a continual race with the chemists, they need to ban performance-enhancing drugs not yet invented. How do they do that? Take annual blood samples from the players and keep them for future reference. When the newest performance-enhancing drug is discovered, these samples would be tested and players shown to have taken the drug would pay the price.

2. What kind of price? A lifetime ban from baseball. Why not? Far more games have been illegally impacted by drugs than by gambling. Why give suspensions? Do players accidentally inject themselves with steroids? No. It's a conscious decision to cheat. I say treat performance-enhancing drugs just like gambling. One strike and you're out!

Drastic times call for drastic measures, right? Maybe, but at this point in time, it's awfully unlikely we'll see this strategy implemented. The Player Association has so far shot down the possibility of blood testing, which is one of the reasons why it's still impossible to test for HGH. Maybe they'll change their tune in the face of public pressure following the Mitchell Report, or maybe they'll buckle down and fight to retain whatever diminishing rights the union still holds.

Read FanHouse's full coverage of the Mitchell Report.
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I'm sure even after all these years, Jim Bouton, former big leaguer and author of the iconic Ball Four, isn't a voice that Major League Baseball wants to hear. But, that's never stopped him before, so let's take a few seconds to consider his opinion about MLB's performance-enhancing drug crisis. In a recent interview with Kevin Hayward on the blog All on the Field, Bouton made the distinction between "greenies" and some of the PEDs used by players today:

But you have to distinguish greenies -- the peptos as they were called -- from steroids. Greenies only allowed you to play up to your ability. If you didn't get a good night's sleep, or you had a hangover, it would allow you to play up to your ability, or at least some players thought that. It did not create a different human being. It did not change your physical makeup. It did not allow you to play beyond your ability, your normal ability as steroids do and as Human Growth Hormone does.

I'm not sure I completely believe the "only play up to your ability" argument. So they help the guy who's hungover and tired; is he saying they have no effect at all on someone who got a good night's sleep? Or do they increase concentration across the board? I've never used them so I don't know, but I suspect it's the latter. Bouton also has a suggestion for how we should view some of the records that have fallen recently (after the jump).

1) ESPN columnist Bill Simmons does not like Dane Cook. He is not exactly alone in this; slowly, like a zombie waddling awkwardly in friendship, the tides of popularity are turning against Dane Cook. Realizations that he stole jokes from Louis C.K., not to mention America's collective gasp of "Wait, we thought this guy was funny? What were we thinking!?" -- that will end a career of popularity mediocrity faster than you can make loud noises instead of a punch line. Yes, Cook's time is nigh, and in recent columns Simmons has been merely piling on.

Ah, but Cook will not go quietly into the night: in an ESPN chat yesterday, he fired back at el Jefe Simmons. I smell a rap battle! (HT: Shoot Your Hopes and Dreams)

2) As a Bears fan, it pains me to link this, even though I know it's early in the season: Yes, the Lions are 2-0. (For the record, Michigan is 1-2. Side by side, something is really wrong with that picture.) How Motor City fans will handle this is yet to be seen, though I wouldn't rule out spontaneous cranial combustion.

3) All on the Field interviews Ball Four author Jim Bouton. He wrote a book. Do those have pixels yet? Because if they don't, I ain't interested.

4) If you haven't seen this video of Jimmy Clausen's Heismann bid flying past his head like so many errant shotgun snaps, go. You'll thank yourself.

5) Now Brian Billick is whining. Does anyone in the league not do things like this? Are we serious here?