Great comment by Szymborski. It is refreshing to see somebody taking a realistic view. What amazes me is that in the recent past there was discussion about whether getting popped for 'roids was enough to keep a player from being NFL rookie of the year, but Mark McGuire is treated like a monster. After ignoring the issue for years, now baseball is being held to a much higher standard than some other sports. Some products that are now banned were used widely in the 1960s according to a friend who pitched in the minors at that time, including by him. Would all of the stuff Sandy Koufax put on his arm to kill the pain be legal now? This is not meant to defame any of the great former players but to help add some more perspective to this present witch hunt.

I wonder if there's any mainstream writer out there yet who has just come out to say that... the steroids issue really doesn't matter. Personally, the one and only issue here is that of health - are athletes needlessly endangering their livelihoods with these drugs.

One could argue about the numerous side effects, but that doesn't seem what the issue is about. If there was some magic miracle drug with no side effects that instantly contributed to muscle growth, people would still cry "cheater". Everyone just complains about the competitiveness issue, but I don't see it. How's this different from a healthier diet, nutritional supplements, heck, even working out. You could argue that pitchers throwing as hard as they do are ruining their arms for the rest of their lives - so are the ones that are willing to throw harder getting a "competitive advantage" over other pitchers who are concerned about their health and don't want to blow out their arms?

For me, the most interesting thing about this whole "scandal" is the free pass the NFL gets as far as steroid using. It wouldn't shock me if nearly every player in the NFL used steroids -- why wouldn't they? Not only for use in helping gain strength but simply for their healing properties. Yet no one seems to care. In the San Diego paper yesterday a columnist compared baseball to pro wrestling because of steroid use.

Also, I'm glad that Marvin Miller brings up the drug labs and their obvious conflict of interest. They only exist, and can get funding, if they get positive tests. That isn't to say that everyone is innocent but we should keep that in mind.

Marvin Miller was on point: the threshold question is whether PEDs in fact have any significant effect in baseball, and analyses from several different directions, from statistical to medical, say they don't. Moreover, the various shrieks and whines are mostly or wholly nonsensical when one examines their ethical positions with some diligence. If I may self-promote, there is an entire website, http://steroids-and-baseball.com/, that examines these and other related issues dispassionately.

there's so much money out there, the pressure to produce. I've loved baseball for 60 years and played as much as I could as long as I could, if someone told me there was something you could take that would let you play the game on the highest level, it would be so very tempting. To actually live the dream you had since boyhood,(of course I'd have played for virtually nothing, so I can understand the temptation.But, if I had ARod's talent and skills and his growing legacy, no way! The career cup of coffee guy or the kid who's just not quite good enough, these are the ones who I'd expect it from. So yes I'll enjoy his skill but Hank's still no1 and so is Roger and none of these "new" tainted records can change that.

The NFL is a joke with respect to PEDs. Every player is on PEDs. In case you haven't noticed, guys who are 6'2" don't naturally way 260+ without having an ounce of fat. Its just not possible to be as fit as these guys are and be that big without some enhancements.

You know what though, like many of the posters in the links, I don't really care. As pointed out, there's always some form of cheating going on. Pushing the boundaries is what seperates the successful from the unsuccessful. This romantic notion of a fair contest has been bollocks for years and anyone who believes it is naive.
These guys play for the highest stakes possible and any angle will be exploited.
Is that cynical? darn right it is.
Is it an accurate assessment of the human condition? darn right it is.
How appropriate, considering its Darwin's 200th birthday.

Really Bill. And how do you know that Hank and Roger did not use amphetamines to keep themselves going? Shall we haul Aaron before the Senate to testify? And if he denies it all, should we take his word for it? We know about Willie Mays and his red juice, and Bouton names many players he knew were on amphetamines and comments on their ready availability in locker rooms. Is there some reason for the amnesia about all that?

I won't review again the flawed or unexamined assumptions about the effects of steroids on play and on many other issues, but I will assert that no records are tainted, and there is no way to defend the proposition that earlier records were more pure. That is nostalgia and sentimentality only.

I want to second the recommendation to read the site Eric Walker mentions.

What the above comments mostly prove is how removed otherwise well-trained sports analysts are in the basic assessments of right and wrong. This is a recitation of rationalizations. Shaugnessey's is arguably the worst: "It's not as if he killed the President!" Now there's a good standard for bad conduct. No, A-Rod didn't kill the President. He just obtained millions of dollars from his employer under false pretenses, lied on national television, cast suspicion on hundreds of players who played by the rules, and broke the law. What a guy.

Miller is just as bad. So players might go to jail for breaking laws they actually broke! Horrors---what an injustice. And reciting the old canard about no proof that steroids help performance or are health risks is right up there with the cigarette executives swearing that cigarettes aren't addictive. Now I know why Miller isn't in the Hall of Fame.

I have a theory. The "who cares?" mentality is a by-product of the Roto phenomenon, just like the attitude toward Manny Ramirez ("Who cares if he tanked on the field in a few games? Look at his stats!") Players are just names and stats to a lot of fans now. They aren't real people to them, just daily stat-producers who feed into a computer...and yet baseball, more than any team sport, focuses on the individual. Fans used to root for human beings they admired for their personalities, eccentricites, style and character, and it mattered to those fans whether players were liars, cheats or felons. Some fans still care about those things. Baseball needs genuine heroes, and it will be making a fatal mistake if it lets the Roto mentality convince it that honor and integrity don't matter.

Or maybe baseball has already made that mistake. But hey, it's not like they killed the President...

And what your comments suggest, Jack, is how far removed an apparently intelligent person can be from any appreciation of ethical behavior, legalities, constitutional protections, data based analysis and common decency in dealing with other human beings.

Aside from the fact that your restatement of the arguments are laughably oversimplified, and that your nostalgia for an era that never existed is similarly warped, your unwillingness to come to grips with the fundamental evil in the hysteria over steroids is scarily blinkered.

Jack,

To put another spin on Bob R.'s sentiment, I think the apathy stems from the fact that there are just so many ethical misdeeds associated with the baseball steroids scandal. Becoming outraged over cherry-picked stars here and there who are outed while so many others obviously used, so many others profited, so many others turned their heads, just seems silly.

And that is to say nothing of the ethical shitshow that is the government's ongoing investigation of Bonds, the outing of A-Rod, charging Tejada, etc. To some of us, civil liberties are just as important as PED's.

If you get worked up over A-Rod, don't give the litany of other misdeeds short shrift when tabulating your "scoreboard".