Steroids Part II.

It’s Time To Let Go of the PED Crusade
(Part I. of this series is located below or you can click on the tab located to the right).


The simple fact is: some athletes in all major professional sports used/are using illegal means to improve their level of play. Everyone knows it. We’ve had it smashed into our heads for the past few years. Heck, even during McGwire’s monumental run in ’98 he faced questions about the Andro supplement found in his locker. This is old, insignificant news. Many of our stars are tarnished, some, perhaps, unfairly.

Major League Baseball would lead us to believe this is the single greatest cheating scandal to befall any sport and has arranged for a special investigator to unearth all of the sordid details (The Mitchell Investigation). How does this help us move forward? This report will tramp out a litany of shipping documents, eyewitness accounts, and other forms of evidence that provide a means for dragging certain players through the mud of being associated with Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). This report will solve nothing. Instead, the Mitchell Investigation will merely serve as a way for MLB to point the finger at problematic individuals without understanding the institutionalized cancer the problem has become.

The solution is simple. MLB and the Players’ Union must forget the past and focus on the future. To do this, both sides must agree to adhere to the most stringent of testing procedures, as they become available. Blood for proper HGH testing should be stored. Random, frequent testing of all players must become standard, accepted practice. Amnesty should be given to all players up to this date for any past transgressions with PEDs. Most importantly, Major League Baseball must strive to be on the cutting edge in testing for any and all PEDs. Finally, MLB should enact severe penalties for any players found to have used PEDs from this date onward. Any findings of PEDs from this point onward shall be met with immediate suspension from the game for one unpaid season. Any subsequent positive findings will result in expulsion from the game in perpetuity.

This solution levels the playing field, shows that both sides are intent on cleaning up the game, and will inject the public with a sense that their baseball idols are genuinely playing with tools provided through natural talent and hard work. By storing blood samples, players will be unlikely to attempt to find other ways to beat the system, as they know when a test is devised to find such supplements they will be discovered as frauds. Moreover, if baseball is willing to devise the most comprehensive testing system known to the world, players will be too frightened to challenge it.

I don’t care that players cheated in the past, because it is going to be impossible to adequately discover who did what. Instead of pointing fingers we should just sweep it all under the rug and start from scratch. This is the only way to ensure that the game is clean. From that point on, if a player attempts to cheat the game, he will be rightfully and severely punished.