Steroids and Baseball

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/sports/baseball/11orza.html?_r=1

I am admittedly not a huge baseball fan, but the recent news of Alex Rodriguez and his foray into steroids in 2003 was certainly another disappointment in a series of disappointments in the integrity of the game. After all, this is a person who has set the record for the richest contracts in baseball history (which is probably another issue entirely), and someone who is admired by millions of fans around the world. Much like the Michael Phelps issue, Alex Rodriguez has damaged his legacy forever.

However, what is more troubling, raised in the NY Times article, is the question of if there are other superstar players who took steroids.

Alex Rodriguez’s positive test from that year stands out as the only result that has been disclosed through a published report that cited anonymous sources. But what about the more than 100 other players whose positive tests from that year were seized in an April 2004 raid by federal agents?

Nearly five years after that raid, about a dozen other names from 2003 have been linked in some form or another to positive tests. Court documents, for instance, state that 8 of the 10 players who testified before the federal grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative tested positive in their 2003 samples. That group is headed by Barry Bonds, whose 2003 sample first tested negative before a subsequent retesting after the sample was seized revealed the presence of performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds probably is also culpable, so some of the best hitters in the past era have taken steroids. This poses several problems in remembering otherwise some great decades of baseball history - a resurgence of sorts for MLB. It would be easy to just place an asterisk next to players who played during the steroid era, but certainly there were players who were honest and did not take steroids. We cannot just shun the stars of this age though - commercial requirements tend to trump ethics.

Perhaps the solution is, then, in the money. We should penalize severely these players (as has already begun happening as companies have withdrawn their endorsements from A-Rod). Then, we need to remember the greats of this era in a different light. With or without steroids, baseball players are amazing, and we need to appreciate the sport for what it is. Good, and bad.