Less than a week after Esteban Loaiza was arrested for DUI, the A's signed another player recently involved in a DUI incident, Scott Sauerbeck, to replace Steve Karsay, who retired.

Sauerbeck was just a passenger in the incident, not a driver. But it was his car involved in the incident, and both Sauerbeck and the passenger tried to hide from police after they were about to get caught.

Is this what counts for players who are undervalued by the market these days? People who (let people) drive drunk? Yes, nobody was hurt in either incident. The ghosts of those not killed are grateful.

I feel sick. First, we find out that for over a decade, the A's clubhouse was a virtual pharmacy of illegal performance enhancing chemicals. Nobody gave a crap because the juiced up players helped them win. Now, this.

It's not really signing Sauerbeck per se that bothers me. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. Really, what bothers me more is the historical pattern here.

Do you really think the A's management went all those years and had no idea all these players were using these chemicals? Have the A's ever expressed any regret or remorse or disapproval of any sort of chemical abuse? Maybe the Jeremy Giambi-John Mabry trade was...but we can only guess.

The question is: what kind of values do the A's really have, anyway?

I want to root for a team that wins because of their values, not despite them. I get enough of that sort of behavior from the politics section of the newspaper. I don't want it in my sports section.

The A's have a designated driver program at their home games. With each passing year, they make it harder and harder to sign up. These days, you have to go to two different tables, sign two different forms, get a wristband stuck around your arm, all to get a voucher for a extremely small cup of soda that you can only redeem at certain stands in the stadium, the list of which is published nowhere, not even on the voucher. If you visit the wrong stand--sorry, you just wasted five minutes of your life standing in line for nothing. You need to go stand in that other line over there.

If they want to show they really have some values in this regard, give me one short form to fill out, don't make me put on a useless wristband that nobody checks anyway, give me the largest soda you have, let me redeem it at any doggone stand in the whole stadium, and make Esteban Loaiza and Scott Sauerbeck pay for it. Then maybe I'll start believing the A's actually believe in something truly valuable.