I feel the players union is the single biggest culprit in the Performance enhancing scandals. Their refusal to help implement good testing programs and refusal to police themselves, and therefore allow this to go on is the single worst offence in the entire situation.
I generally side with the players because I feel the owners have always and will always have their own best interests in mind. Whether it be with contracts, or salaries or trades etc., the owners have a track record of abuse. Just look at the non guaranteed contracts and poor retirement policies used in the NFL to see what a weak players union will produce. But owners and the league have been trying to implement a testing program for years, and the players have refused to come to a viable compromise.
The players should have been the first to come forward and show how they are clean, and their silence as a group is the biggest indictment possible. Guilty by association is often unfair, but in this case I believe it is true. The guy driving the getaway car is just as guilty as the guy stealing the money from the teller. All the clean players who did not come forward and help eliminate this are just as guilty. I understanding you do not sell out your friends, but with the possible scope of this problem, clean guys who are being outperformed by 'enhanced' players should be upset, and are being cheated from their own earning potential. Guys like Ryan Freel (hopefully actually clean) could be an all-star if all 'enhanced' players are removed from the league, and just think how much money he has lost as a result.
Solution: all clean players come forward and form an alliance against the other players. They should subject themselves to rigorous, constant testing, and allow clauses in their contract that include year-long to career ending suspensions, or salary forfeiture for violation of the Substance Abuse policy. That way the public knows who is and who is not clean. Guilty by association, or lack thereof.
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Gentlemen,
I respect all of your opinions and understand your righteous indignation over this, but I think you are all living in a fantasy land.
If anyone is at fault, it is the fans themselves. We WANT enhanced performers, so why do we damn the players who seek out ways to do what we ask of them, legal or otherwise.
Isn't Tiger Woods laser eye surgery a performance enhancing advantage?
Isn't state-of-the-art surgical equipment (not available to the general public on demand) a unfair aide in injury rehabilitation?
Isn't a personal hyper-beric chamber for your room at training camp an advantage?
All players take performance enhancing drugs of some kind. Even if it's caffeine or an over the counter multivitamin. It's only illegal (and therefore "tragic" and "deplorable" according the media) if the MLB bans it. Otherwise, it's just finding a competitive advantage and doing everything you can to beat out your opponent.
We created this monster. We have to take responsibility for it. It's just too easy to sit here and throw mud at these guys. It's too easy to divide the baseball world into good guys and bad guys. That's just childishly naive, in my opinion.
Players like Barry Bonds could have taken steroids every day for his whole life. They are still amazing athletes that can do more than 99.99% of the entire population of the Earth. Steroids don't give you patience at the plate. They don't let you see pitches any clearer, or analyze situations and pitch counts any better. You have to respect for that, like them or not.
The only way forward is to rigorously test players and impose real penalties in the future. There is nothing we can do about the past. Let's all just get over it and move on.
Let's also just take a step back and remember that these aren't the Nuremberg Trials here. It's just baseball.
Ian I agree with almost everything you said. yes we the fan halped create this, yes there are pleanty of legal performance enhancers that people use to get ahead, and I have no problem with finding the edge. I agree with Mitchell in that we should not punish anyone who the report turned up. The slate should be clean and we should start anew.
However, just as Steroids saved baseball in the 90's, they will kill it in the new millenium. Just like the industrial age is over and the new cool thing is for the world to go green, the new thing in baseball and sports this coming decade will be 'clean' players with no steroids.
If baseball's players union can't get their act together and realize this then the steroids issue will self destruct the sport.
and while this may not be the nuremburg trials, baseball was a $23 billion a year industry last year, and losing that money will hurt more than just the already rich owners and players.
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