Pessimist Post – Steroids

Is anybody else sick of hearing about this topic? Every couple months we get new information concerning the ‘steroid era’. I say Who Cares? For one it gives them extra media attention and publicity, so on top of all the money they made from taking steroids in the first place, they are now making even more off of steroids from all of the media attention. More importantly, true baseball fans are not concerned about who stuck who with what, instead they are counting down to the day pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to spring training (February 17th for some teams).

Now I will contradict myself and talk about steroids. This will be my first and last post on this subject.

To begin, I don’t care who took steroids and who didn’t. I know all of the effects, benefits, dangers, etc. and if you gave me $250 million to take steroids for a couple of years I would say, ‘where do I sign’. If you told me my team would have a better chance to win the World Series this year, but some of the players would need to take steroids, I’d find out where to get them and which players were willing to take the risk. That said, I do understand the risks they pose to young athletes and fans who may be tempted to use them so I am happy that there is finally an effort to eliminate them from baseball and sports in general (of course this doesn’t apply to football).

The big question that lingers is ‘should these players be voted into the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame or not’. My take. Unless you don’t let any player that played from 1985 to 2005 into the Hall of Fame, you have to let anyone in that put up the numbers worthy of this recognition. The reason. I am fairly confident that no one can give me a complete and accurate list of all of the players who took steroids at some point in their career. New information comes out all the time in the form of books, testimonies, lists, interviews, etc. We can not create the all-inclusive list today and we never will! On top of that, steroids have been around since the 1930s. Can you tell me with 100% certainty that none of the 231 current Hall of Famers ever took steroids?

If you want to designate an area of the hall as the steroid era, that is fine with me and I think would help the next generation of fans understand the over-reaching impact steroids has had on baseball over the past 10 or so years.

Would such a distinction punish the players that didn’t take steroids? Some people use the argument that players such as Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones and Todd Helton should not be penalized because of the actions of other players. I couldn’t disagree more. Again, you will never be able to say for sure who has and who hasn’t experimented with the drug (I highly doubt the players named have but I am simply trying to make a point). More importantly, the players who truly were clean are either the most ignorant people on the planet and had no idea what was going on or they sat back and enjoyed the benefits of inflated numbers and higher contracts as well, making them just as guilty of playing in the steroid era.

Finally, any fan who is interested in the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame will undoubtedly be able to look at stats, records, pictures, articles, tweets, etc. and determine for themselves how the players in question stack up against players of their own era as well as players that came before or after them. Thus allowing each baseball fan to evaluate how he or she perceives the era and keeping all of the players, politicians, coaches, media and MLB brass out of the discussion once and for all.

-Furtah

bleachergm.blogspot.com