i'd like to see bill lee chime in on this. i like baseball a lot. the game should be played the way ty cobb spat and cussed for. babe ruth's natural obliteration of the game (business-wise and baseball-wise) aside, (and who can blame babe ruth?) it is a pure game. it's the god damn talkin' sport. for a true fan baseball is about each pitch thrown in each of the innumerable situations that make it so interesting. sure, all kinds of shit has gone down over it's history and the game has stuck around with no large visible scars, but it has been a long time since baseball was the national pasttime. it ain't gonna stick around just because it has. i want to see real baseball played by players with incredible BASEBALL TALENT, not humans with athleticism-enough-to-be-drafted and then ENHANCED so they can close their eyes and hope to time a pitch decently enough to get a broken-bat gapper. however, today in america baseball cannot exist without some sort of compromise. people want to see homeruns and bullpen horses warming up every day on baseball tonight. how else can middle-class white men tell their sons about the game when bodies crashing and long bomb touchdowns and dunks and 50 other sports exist? it's too intricate a sport. but come on...steroids? i don't know where the line should be drawn but let's cross the obvious bullshit off the list. pop a handful of advil and get on the mound, i don't care, but it'd be nice to see some sort of resemblence of actual baseball.

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.

I don't care if they use steroids either. Nor do I care if they own a baseball glove 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. I bet they could make some amazing catches. They don't belong in Major League Baseball though.

There are a whole slew ofrulesdesigned to reduce artificial advantages that technolgy would otherwise make possible. MLB's rule on bat diameter (2 3/4 inches at its widest point) is designed to prevent someone from walking up to the plate with a strike zone blocking montrosity on his shoulder. The rules against steroids are no different, part of an overall effort to standardize the equipment of the game.

I make no distinction between steroids, corked bats or spit balls. The fact that some players have been able hide their use in the past is irrelevent.