Juice All You Want, What Do I Care?

From the Wiki Commons.

Yesterday it was reported that a South Florida lab was supplying PEDs (to be read, steroids) to A-Rod, Nelson Cruz, Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon, and Gio Gonzalez. I had some good fun with this, calling Gio Gonzalez a cheater and fake on Twitter, mostly because it was amusing. After all, the "good and pure" Nationals fans down there think their team is clean, and here's a guy who turned into (almost literally) Cy Young last year, but once bounced around how many systems (yes, I know people liked his talent, but not this much)? It's just fun to needle DC fans.

With that said, I have to admit here- I don't give a damn. I'm not bothered in the slightest by baseball players taking steroids. Let me go further- I still think Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should have been first ballot Hall-of-Famers, and Lance Armstrong should be a seven-time Tour De France champion. If you enter a competition, and the playing field is equal, but you're the best in it, that should be recognized. In the case of baseball it's even more clear to me- they weren't even testing for steroids, they weren't banned by the league. I don't care if they're illegal either- so is drinking and driving, spousal abuse, substance abuse, and a lot of other stuff that ballplayers have done, but we don't strike their achievements from the record.

They are illegal today, and banned by the sport though, so I should be against these guys, right? No. I still frankly believe that the majority, if not close to all of the ballplayers out there probably use something to get an edge. These just happen to be good players, good players who probably got caught. While there will be calls to void A-Rod's deal now, and other punitive actions, they are tough to carry out. This is because there's no reason to do this.

From the Wiki Commons.

Enough of the pontificating about cheating. That's great that Lance Armstrong "cheated" in his seven titles, but is it really cheating when no one else can even be given his titles because literally everyone else was doing the same thing? Save me the "but what message does it send to the kids" stuff too, as your kids are not competing for millions of dollars, and maybe if parents are worried about their kids doing this, they should exercise some control over them (that's still allowed). We are talking about the best athletes in the world, trying to get a millimeter's advantage on other great athletes, in the name of entertaining the public and getting money. We're not talking about role models here, or even something kids should be equating themselves with.

In short, "ooooohhhhh, bad! Very, very bad." Or, in my terms: who the hell cares.