Forget baseball and steroids. That's old news. The new hotness in baseball is all about cockfighting. As I'm sure you know, Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal were recently revealed to be major cockfighting enthusiasts thanks to a YouTube video of a cockfight the two had in the Dominican Republic last year. It's since been taken down.

Obviously because no cares about roosters anywhere near as much as dogs, this story hasn't even come close to drawing the outrage that the Vick case did. Cockfighting > Dogfighting.

But anyway, it's still ruffled some feathers. Aramis Ramirez, however, doesn't care. He is a cockfighting king, and proud of it.

A-Ram was prominently featured in a recent issue of a Dominican cockfighting magazine, En La Traba, in which he is pictured with several roosters that he raises for fighting.

Of roosters, he said in the magazine, “When I’m in the Dominican Republic, I’m dedicated entirely to them.” That may also explain why A-Ram can never drive in runners that are in scoring position. Less cock, more bat might help A-Ram.

Anyway, Dominicans say cockfighting is in their blood, which is always the best excuse. Don't blame yourself, blame your culture. Or blame society, that works too.

Frankly, I'm not that upset about this, nor am I upset with Martinez, A-Ram or Marichal. I'm upset with how the public outcry over this is a peep in comparison to the Vick case.

People here in the US get all bent out of shape when dogs are killed for sport, but those same people could care less about cockfighting. And don't give me the, "Well, these guys are Dominican, and it's legal there, so I'm not going to comment" argument. If Martinez, Marichal, and Ramirez were doing legal dogfighting in the Dominican Republic, people wouldn't be saying "It's ok, it's legal there." They'd be up in arms.

To me, our apathy to cockfighting by MLB players (even if it's legal in their country) makes Vick's imprisonment seem more along the lines of a witch hunt rather than actual justice. Because no matter how you look at it, there's no way Vick would have been railroaded into prison if he'd been involved with cockfighting instead of dogfighting - even though they're both felonies in most states in the US (dogfighting: 48; cockfighting: 33). And when you honestly stop and think about that, there's something wrong with that.

Particularly if you claim to honestly give a #### about animals.