Steroids

Any doubt about whether baseball players and executives knew of the steroid problem has now been obliterated by a great piece in ESPN The Magazine. It's a must-read for any serious baseball fan.

I must admit to thinking (or, perhaps, hoping) that the steroid problem was an isolated incident among a few baseball players. I held out hope long after hope became irrational that McGwire and Bonds didn't take steroids. I now believe, probably like most fans, that we've gone through a steroid era in baseball, in which statistics and records were artificially inflated by performance enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, baseball's refusal to address this problem has created an assumption among fans that great players putting up great stats were on the juice. It's a terrible situation, because stats are such an important part of the game and because average fans now have doubts about what they're watching on the field.

The only way out of this is to enact very strict procedures and draconian penalties for violators of a steroid policy. The current policy is inadequate, and I hope that players and executives alike will see the wisdom of cracking down on this problem the same way baseball cracked down on the gambling problem in the 1920s.