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Los Angeles Dodgers Respond to Dee Gordon's Suspension

Players and coaches of the Los Angeles Dodgers react to the news of the 80-game suspension issued by MLB on former teammate, Dee Gordon. Plus, were the warning signs there for years?

LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Dodgers went to bed Thursday night with the shocking news that their former teammate and friend, Dee Gordon, had been suspended by Major League Baseball for 80 games for testing positive for two performance-enhancing drugs.

When they woke up, we were waiting for them. 

"I was shocked," Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts said when he heard the news. "I think he's a great kid, he works hard, he's done a lot of good things, so to hear this, it surprised a lot of us in the clubhouse."

There was plenty of confusion and criticism in the clubhouse on Friday afternoon, from those that wondered why Gordon was able to play and impact the Marlins four-game sweep of the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine, and those that just felt bad for their friend.

"It was just a shock and just real disappointing to hear for obvious reasons," former teammate Carl Crawford, who talks to Gordon all the time, told ESPN's Doug Padilla. "I texted him last night and talked to him about it and he gave me his side. It is what it is at this point."

Crawford wouldn't go into detail about what Gordon told him in that conversation but will always be there for his friend.

"I just told him that it's just unfortunate because all the hard work you put in the game just, kind of, is about to go down the drain a little bit. You know, whether you're right or wrong, or you did or you didn't, in the eyes of everybody else, it's just not going to look good."

Gordon will move on, and he will return to the field again on July 29. As long as he performs on the field, fans in Miami and across the league will forgive and forget. For some Dodgers however, they won't forget him knocking in the game-tying run or scoring the winning run in the Marlins 5-3 victory on Thursday night.

"It sucks that a guy who tested positive can still play," said Kiké Hernandez, who was part of that trade that sent Gordon to Miami. "He decided a game. As far as my feelings about it, I don't really care. It's not my life."

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Detroit Tigers pitcher, Justin Verlander, shared Hernandez's sentiment, albeit, he was more vocal about it:

"This PED [expletive] is killing me," he wrote on Twitter. "If u test positive u need to not play. You shouldn't be allowed to effect games while appealing."

More than likely, MLB and the players union will have to enforce stricter penalties for PED users in the next collective bargaining agreement, which is set to expire on Dec. 1 of this year. Some players believe a season-long ban should be punishment for first time offenders, others simply believe that you should not be allowed on the field while the appeal process plays out.

The questions will continue as to how and why Dee Gordon decided to cheat and as USA Today's Bob Nightengale wrote, maybe the better question is "Why wouldn't he?" For those that knew Gordon, like manager Don Mattingly, the writing may have been on the wall.

"You have to remember, he was 140-something pounds when he came up, Now's slowly over a few years built up, I think he's 170 pounds," Mattingly said on Monday before the series and suspension started. "This is a kid who has put on mature strength, along with a pretty good swing, and obviously the speed tool isn't going away."

The clues may have been there, but we in the media simply didn't read between the lines, or maybe we didn't want to. While Gordon was busy winning the NL batting title last season and leading the league in stolen bases, he entertained fans and his underdog story was something special.

Gordon famously wore a Superman shirt under his Dodgers jersey during his time in Los Angeles, and as we have seen through movies and comic books, sometimes the greatest superheroes fall to earth.  

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