Personally, I don’t really care that much who took steroids and who didn’t. I’ve said this before in other contexts, but I’ll repeat it here: beyond the legality/illegality issue, I don’t see such a big difference between taking steroids and getting a cortisone shot for an injury. Steroids are performance enhancing; a cortisone shot isn’t? A player gets injured; he can’t play. He gets a shot; he can play. That enhances his performance. Period. (Before the shot, he can’t perform at all; after, he’s good to go.) Same with “Tommy John” surgery. Some pitchers who have torn up their tendons got a ligament transplant and added 5 mph to their fastballs. It’s hard to believe some players haven’t gotten that surgery even without an injury, just to gain that advantage. And why stop at medical manipulations? These guys don’t ever have to have real jobs; they work out all year, have personal trainers, personal chefs, are miniature businesses unto themselves with the money they make and the corresponding expenditures for keeping themselves world-class athletes. Their whole lives revolve around making themselves into these specialized creatures for our entertainment. Everything about them is artificial. Pro athletes are as different from you and me as a thoroughbred horse is from a pack mule. Does it really matter what they do to make themselves that way, especially if the same actions are being taken by (at least) a majority of their peers?
This is where someone will probably jump in with the “it is a health risk for them” argument. I’ve got a newsflash for everyone: spending several years as a high-level athlete is, in and of itself, a health risk. Pushing your body to those limits will have inevitable consequences down the road, whether you shoot up steroids or not. Bad knees, bad back, neck pains, shoulder pains–have a good career in the pros and you’ll get all that and probably more after your playing days are done. At least if you kept yourself in the game for a while, you’ll probably have the money to pay for the operations you’ll need when you’re 50.
And yeah, it’s illegal without a legitimate prescription. OK, so get a legitimate prescription. Go to a doctor and say, “it’s my job to be in peak physical condition, and I need this stuff to be in peak physical condition.” Sure there are risks associated with taking this stuff. Have you watched any of those prescription drug commercials that air ad nauseum on TV these days? Have you listened those lists of potential side effects? Folks are pimping drugs on TV with potential side effects up to and including DEATH. But if there’s a need for the drug, doctors will prescribe it.
The only thing that gets me about this is, of all athletes, why would baseball players feel that they need such enhancements? Will taking steroids (or HGH, or whatever else) help you hit behind the runner? Hit the cutoff man? Lay down a bunt? Keep a hitter off balance by changing speeds? There are so many aspects of playing baseball that can’t be helped by drugs; it displays such a short-sighted view of the sport to think that the only way to win is to knock the ball out of the park or blow a fastball by the batter. That’s where management is guilty–they failed to convey to the players that skill, not mere strength, translates into wins. Every time I’ve ever sneered about the “semi-retarded steroid freaks” on TV, it turns out I wasn’t kidding. They’re dumb. If some of those marginal players had focused on making themselves better ball players instead of better physical specimens, that would have done more to secure their roster spot than all the drugs they could shoot.
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I think the argument is that for about 5 years now everyone has been saying “Bonds, McGuire and Sosa” in the same breath regarding the home run chase and suspicion of steroids. Over that span there has been a ton of smoke around Barry and Big Mac and essentially none around Sosa. He’s gotten a bit of a bad rap.
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On a lighter note, how can you be “Omniscient” if you don’t know how to spell McGwire’s name?
