steve wrote:I do not care if baseball players use steroids. I do not care.

Much of this prattling debate is about the "purity" of the game and how steroids soil it. Spare me.

The point of a person being called a professional athlete is based on performance, natural-physical and mental ability. This defeats the point of a person having the title “pro-athleteâ€

I don't care about BASEBALL. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.

steve wrote:Much of this prattling debate is about the "purity" of the game and how steroids soil it. Spare me.

In all fairness, the "purity" of the game isn't some abstract concept. It's quite real. It's the notion that the outcome of each game/play is decided by two teams/players working within a set of agreed upon rules. This is what fans pay to see. Adhering to those rules confers legitimacy on each victory.

If it becomes apparent that games are being decided by actions that violate those agreed upon rules (i.e. gambling, steroids, sandpaper, or cork), fans have a right to be upset. They've invested themselves in a product that promises legitimacy, and they're being given one that is compromised.

geiginni wrote:if a performer in an orchestra chooses to use a substance or device which enhances their performance, I don't care. Even if it provided them with an unfair advantage in obtaining a principal or soloist position; and if they fuck up, tough-shit, they're out of there. I don't believe it shoud be different for any entertainer - regardless of how they entertain...

I like this comparison, and I wish it were accurate. It's not, though, because sports are primarily competitive; any competition between & within orchestras is secondary, & isn't a significant part of why people enjoy playing in them and watching them play.

If a significant part of what makes a talented & fabulously wealthy athlete what they are is the drugs that they take, then that athelete's competitors will want to do the same. A coked-out first violinist will probably not spawn a bunch of coked-out violinists wanted to take their place, but a steroid-enhanced home run record holder will spawn an army of steroid-enhanced hitters, both in and out of the league.

I don't care much about baseball either, but Sammy Sosa looks like a monster. The leagues should do all they can to take that part of the competition out of the competition. It creeps me out. His forehead ripples when he chews gum.

one thing that i don't think anyone really hit on is the fact that baseball players are looked up to and admired by kids. i know this sounds pretty hokey and soccer momish, but it really is a big deal. if you legitimize steroid use for pro athletes, you're telling impressionable kids that it is OK to subject your body to anything in order to get ahead in sports. you can also probably argue that this will spill over into many other facets of their lives, and then they are abusing all sorts of drugs to "get ahead."

i'm no nancy reagan "just say no" type of guy, but i do think it's a bad idea to tell kids that steroids are ok to use.

one more point. if records are constantly being broken, it definitely cheapens them. the single season home run record stood for what, 38 years or something (?) and then it was broken again a few short years later. one of the main things about baseball is the mystique of how the cubs never win the world series, no pitcher will win 40 games, etc etc. it's kind of boring if all of a sudden you've got 5 guys hitting 60 home runs.

I don't think steroid use is okay. I think it fucks athletes up plenty, and the evidence is all around us. I just think the reaction to it is silly, and I think setting policy for the safety of "the kids who look up to them" is ridiculous.

As an aside, fuck the kids. Really, in any political discussion concerning the behavior of adults, leave your fucking kids out of it. It's your responsibility to raise them, not mine, and it is selfish of you to make me their babysittyer so you don't have to do your job. For the kids? They are too ignorant to be part of the discussion, and their irrational perspectives are none of our business. I'm tired of children setting policy for adults.

Guys who use steroids early in their careers have short ones (Jose Canseco, Giambi). It wasn't even against the rules, and depending on interpretation, it may not be now. Guys who use steroids later in their careers to counteract the deterioration of age or injury (Barry Bonds, I'm guessing Edgar Martinez, Rafael Palmiero, Andres Galaraga, Julio Franco) seem to have normal-length careers with more productive years late.

I don't think we should encourage steroid use. I think it is destructive, and should be discouraged with frank talk, photos of Lyle Alzado and an evening reviewing Sammy Sosa at-bats. I just think freaking out about it is silly, and denies the historically dirty/scrappy character of the game -- replacing history with a mythologized purity.

Okay, for a few years there, some ballplayers juiced and put up big numbers. So what. For a few years the baseball was dead and nobody hit homers. For a few years half the major-league-caliber players were in the army. For many years there were no black men in the competition. The game absorbs these anomalies, averages them out over its history and moves on. The juice era is no different from the dead-ball era, except that the players took it on themselves to manipulate the game rather than the team owners imposing a manipulation on them.

I don't care about it because it is nothing special. It is one of the many things that the game has had to put up with and is no big deal.

steve wrote:As an aside, fuck the kids. Really, in any political discussion concerning the behavior of adults, leave your fucking kids out of it. It's your responsibility to raise them, not mine, and it is selfish of you to make me their babysittyer so you don't have to do your job. For the kids? They are too ignorant to be part of the discussion, and their irrational perspectives are none of our business. I'm tired of children setting policy for adults.

Thanks for verbalizing something I've felt for a long time but couldn't find the right words for.

I'm not saying I disagree entirely. I too am sick of hearing the "Think about the children!" bullshit thrown at me by people who seem to think they know better than I do how to live my life. I don't think there should be legislation about steroid use in baseball. I'm saying that it should be self-policing.

The athletes and their organizations need to be responsible about not putting out a message that steroid use is alright or that it isn't a big deal, and parents need to do a good job of raising their kids so as to avoid stupidity such as their kid having a heart attack because they went crazy on steroids and speed pills the week before the big homecoming game.

Yes, the game will normalize out after the juiced up era, however, part of that means it has to end. It sounds like they were trying to do that, and just sweep things under the rug, hoping it would just go away, but it hasn't, and now it's a big PR disaster. So basically, I'm just thinking that they fucked up with the way it was handled. Instead of just letting a few guys break a couple records, then cracking down, they let it go on for 5 years because they got greedy.

Have the number of injuries so far this season now that steroids come close to matching the total of last season yet?
If so, I wonder how many there wouldn't be if this steroid legislation hadn't happened.

they should just start a steroids driven herculean league and then also a normal league. you can shove a needle in your ass if it makes you happy i guess... but don't then tell me about yr awesome rbi and how the last person to do it was some hero dude from the 50s who liked to eat hot dogs all day, swing a bat, and work a lot harder with his natural god/hot dog-given abilities.