In the midst of one of the best playoff races in the history of baseball, a small story caught the Fan's eye. According to the story, a pitcher with a six year career, but who had fallen on hard times in recent years, fought his way back to the major leagues after not pitching since last year. That's a nice story so far.

What happened next is an unfortunate turn to this human interest story. Jose Paniagua, once a big part of the Mariner's playoff bullpen in the late 90's, came in to his first (new) playoff hopeful team game for the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox were leading 8-2 at the time. It would have been a sad end to the story if this was about the one third of an inning Paniagua pitched.

In that third of an inning, Paniagua walked one and gave up three hits to account for four runs. If that would have been the end of the story, Paniagua would have been a footnote under the heading of "Congratulations for Trying - Now Go Home With Your 108.00 ERA." But that wasn't the end of the story.

After all Paniagua's work to get back and all the repetitions and the bus rides in the minor leagues to get back to this point, all was lost as Paniagua inexplicably lost his composure and blamed the home plate umpire's pitch calling for his troubles. A diatribe and a body language that involves one digit on one hand followed and most likely, Paniagua may never be heard from in the major leagues again.

The White Sox released him today after rightly condemning his actions as not indicative of the White Sox organization and "inexcusable," according to White Sox GM, Ken Williams.

On the surface, and in a knee jerk reaction, most of us fans would applaud such swift action and our comments would be something like: "It's about time someone in baseball had the balls to put these prima donnas in their place." And again, that sentiment would not be wrong. There is an awful lot of disgraceful behavior in baseball and it's time to clean some of it up.

But there is a secondary reaction that wonders how much this smacks of double standards. The Chicago White Sox also have another player named Carl Everett who has made that same gesture to fans on at least two occasions in his career. Despite that history, the White Sox specifically traded for Everett to help them in the pennant race.

Would Paniagua's unraveling be punished the same way if he had been pitching all year in relief and had a 2.70 ERA? It's hard to know because it hasn't happened. But the double standard already found by trading for, and relying heavily on Carl Everett. That indicates that the punishment and its results would be different if Paniagua's history had been different.

And the more dangerous question would be whether or not the same punishment would be meted out if Paniagua was not Hispanic. If you think of the strongest moral condemnations in recent MLB history, at least after the John Rocker extravaganza, all involve Hispanic players. Juan Gonzales, Manny Ramirez and Jose Paniagua. Is that a coincidence?

Think about the controversy caused by Alex Rodriguez when he questioned his future as a Texas Ranger. You would have thought that someone had been caught with a voodoo doll of the pope. The man was just concerned and as a sensitive man, wondered out loud what was going to happen in his future. Don't we all do that?

I would be very surprised if Jose Paniagua ever pitches in the major leagues again. That's a shame and that's a double standard. The Fan does not condone what Paniagua did. But come on folks, ballplayers have done worse in a major league uniform and continue to play to this day.

And you know what? With the state of umpiring in Major League Baseball, as observed on numerous posts here this summer, Paniagua probably had a good beef.