Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Hipocrisy of Steroids and Baseball

The commissioner, the owner, the general managers, the doctors, the trainers, the fans, and yes the players were all complicit in the steroids scandal in baseball. Yet the players are singled out and demonized for their involvement while everyone else gets a free ride. Why? To think the owners, GMs, and Bud Selig didn't know what was going on is simply naive. How could they not be aware? The doctors and trainers clearly forsook their duties to the health of the players. And the fans didn't bat an eye at all the juice fueled homers during the steroid era. Everything was fine and dandy.
Then Canseco has to go and publish a book and rub it in the face of America that baseball is "corrupt" and on comes the righteous indignation. All of a sudden everyone was horrified by the prospect of steroids--except not really: Shawne Merriman of the NFL only received a 4 game suspension for doing steroids and I never hear the man being denigrated as a cheater, or it suggested that he is not worthy of the hall of fame. A google search of "Shawne Merriman steroids" yields a whopping 33,200 hits as compared with 3,970,000 for "Barry Bonds steroids", 415,00 for A Rod, 165,000 for David Ortiz, 124,000 for Mark McGwire, and even 75,600 for a comparative no name in Rafael Palmeiro. Do people really believe the monsters they see beating the hell out of each other on Sunday aren't built with more than protein bars? Please.
So let's drop all of the posturing, admit that there is an awful lot of blame to go around, and let players that are deserving into the hall of fame even if that means opening up a "Steroids Era Wing", the place is a museum after all.

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