So many of you probably don't know what has recently happened to Robinson Cano, and even more of you probably don't even know who Robinson Cano is. As a massive baseball fan and an even bigger Yankee fan, I feel it necessary to talk about this. I'll try to keep things brief but there's a lot of things to dive into here, so let's get started.

Robinson Cano is a second baseman for the Seattle Mariners. Born in the Dominican Republic, Cano was signed as an amateur free agent by the New York Yankees in 2001 following his graduation from high school. Cano would spend the next several years in the minor leagues for the Yankees, despite the Yankees repeated attempts to trade him. In 2004, he was part of three separate trades (the trade that brought Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees from the Texas Rangers, a trade that would have brought outfielder Carlos Beltran from the Kansas City Royals to the Bronx, and a third one that would have brought starting pitcher Randy Johnson to New York from the Arizona Diamondbacks) none of which ended up involving him.

He would continue to work his way up through the Yankees farm system, all while never really emerging as a potential superstar, rather seen as depth and support. However, once he made his debut in 2005, it became clear that Cano would be a generational talent. Since his debut in 2005, Cano has been an All-Star 8 times (2006, '10, '11, '12, '13, '14, '16, '17). In his career he has amassed 2,417 hits and 305 home runs, both of which are in the top five all-time for second basemen, all while he's still under contract through the end of 2022, meaning he'll be under contract until he's 40.

That contract of his is actually somewhat controversial in and of itself. After the 2013 season, Cano was a free agent and was looking to be one of the biggest free agents of the year. He was, at the time, clearly the best player on the Yankees, who had not aged well since their 2009 World Series win, his only World Series ring still, and failed to make the playoffs that year for the first time since 2008 and only the second time since 1997. Cano had batted .314, the only Yankee to hit above .300 in a season that year and the last one to do it until Starlin Castro batted .300 last season. The issue for the Yankees wasn't his skill, as he had also led the Yankees with 27 homers that year. The issue, instead, was the contract he was asking for.

Rumors early on in the offseason said that Cano and his agent were looking for a 7-year, $205 million contract. If it had been 2003 that wouldn't have been a problem, but a lot had changed in those 10 years. The Yankees had, in the past, been known for signing old stars to massive contracts and were consistently in the top 3 teams in terms of payroll. By 2013, though, the Yankees had changed their policy and were looking to keep the payroll down, get younger (as they were the second-oldest or oldest team by average age in baseball), and were paying a massive luxury tax for exceeding the tax threshold put in place by Major League Baseball to help smaller teams be able to compete.

The Yankees knew they couldn't put up the contract Cano was looking for so they countered with another offer. While this one was for less time, 5 years instead of 7, it was for $180 million, meaning he would be earning $36 million a year instead of $35.7 million, a little bit more plus being able to stay in the city he had always played in. Things were looking like he might stay in the Bronx for the long term, but then, all of a sudden, the Seattle Mariners, a team who hadn't made the postseason since 2001, the season Cano signed with the Yankees as a free agent, offered him the exact contract he was looking for and he accepted it, becoming a Mariner.

As a young Yankee fan at the time, I was absolutely devastated. A generation player who came up through the system, a sure-fire Hall of famer who had played his entire career for the team and looked to take over the leadership role with veterans like Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettite, and Derek Jeter retiring that year and the next. On top of that, later that winter Curtis Granderson, who had only been with the team for a few years but had already won the hearts of many fans, including me, signed a contract with the Mets saying "Real New Yorkers are Mets fans," Needless to say it wasn't a good winter for Yankee fans.

The next few seasons seemed alright for Cano, though he only batted above .300 one more time (the 2014 season) and hit over 30 homers once (he hit 39 in 2016). In that time the Mariners had little success, going 87-75 in 2014 (1 win better than the Yankees), 76-86 in '15 (11 wins worse than the Yanks), 86-76 in '16 (1 win worse than New York), and 78-84 in '17 (the Yankees went 91-71). Cano undoubtedly was the leading player on the Mariners both on and off the field, not only being a great player but an excellent person with his philanthropy and kindness to fans, kids, and his opponents.

As I already said, Cano was seen universally as a Hall of Famer once he retired, and many thought he could potentially be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I personally thought his leaving the Yankees and not going to the playoffs, combined with the drop in production, made his odds of getting into the Hall of Fame that much less likely, and his breaking his hand earlier this season and being knocked out for 4 weeks made things even bleaker for him. That's when the big story broke.

Major League Baseball has had a long, troubled history with performance-enhancing drugs, also known as PEDs but more colloquially as steroids. Many players that, in their time, were considered some to the greatest players ever, were later revealed to have used PEDs and it has tainted most players who came to prominence in the 80's and 90's. Guys like Barry Bonds, who holds the record for the most home runs in a season (72) and in a career (762), or Mark McGuire, who before last year held the record for most home runs in a rookie season (he hit 49 but was surpassed by Aaron Judge of the Yankees, who hit 52 last year), or Sammy Sosa, who was part of the legendary "home run race" with McGuire in the 90's. Other prominent players to be caught using PEDs include Alex Rodriguez, Andy Pettite, Melky Cabrera, Francisco Cervelli, and now Robinson Cano. Fun fact: all of those players were on the Yankees 2009 World Series championship team.

Cano was recently suspended for 80 games for violating the League's drug policy, becoming the second player to be suspended for violating that policy this season. Interestingly enough, the first player to be suspended under this rule was suspended one month before Cano made his major league debut. Cano was caught using a drug that is used as a masking agent of PEDs, making it difficult for drug tests to pick them up. Cano claims that the drug in question was prescribed to him by a doctor in the Dominican Republic over the winter for a cold he had but MLB, who conducted an investigation before announcing the suspension, found Cano's claims to be unfounded.

The rules state that for your first offense you are suspended for 80 games, your second 162 (the length of the regular season), and your third you're suspended for life. Since this is Cano's first offense, he will only miss 80 games to this suspension this year, about 20 games of which he was already going to be on the disabled list for.

The League has been reacting for the past few days since the news broke, and while many are shocked there are a few voices that are saying that this has been expected for some time. Mark Teixeira, who was the Yankees' first baseman from 2009-2016 and is now an analyst for FOX Sports, commented that he saw Cano hanging out with A-Rod and Melkey Cabrera and he knew at the time that at least A-Rod had access to these drugs, as he and Cervelli would in 2013 be busted in what was called the Biogenesis scandal and Cabrera would, then with the Giants, be caught violating the policy himself. Brian Cashman, the general manager for the Yankees, has distanced himself from Robinson Cano himself, saying that it isn't too surprising for him either, despite him having offered that massive contract to Cano back in 2013.

In the wake of these revelations many people are calling into question quite literally his entire career, going back to that 2009 World Series season and even before that. That means that Cano's ability to get into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY is in jeopardy. In the history of Major League Baseball, no player that was suspended for using PEDs or was believed by the League to be using them has been voted into the Hall of Fame. That includes Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and will someday include A-Rod and, now, potentially Robinson Cano. However, as the years have gone on the voters have been less and less averse to voting for "dirty" players, something I am personally against, but I am not a voter so it's not up to me.

It's a shame for me and other people who grew up watching Cano play and looking up to him. When a player of his caliber is found to be doing something like this, it feels like we've been let down by our heroes. It's like if we found out Tom Hanks sexually abused someone or Mr. Rogers was a drug smuggler, albeit on a significantly smaller scale but still, as a major Yankee fan and a massive baseball fan it's pretty devastating.

Robinson Cano went from a depth pospect to a superstar to finishing a hall-of-fame career calmly and smoothly to falling from grace. From the kid in DR who might not have ever made the majors to the superstar going to Cooperstown to now having his immortality on the bronze plaque in jeopardy, Cano has had a perplexing career that shouldn't be controlled entirely by his poor decisions (as odds are he's been doing this for a while now) but that's not to say that they shouldn't overshadow them. Cano's a great person and was a great player, too, but whether or not his on-field performance should be called into question has yet to be seen.