So, we had yet another steroids “bombshell” hit the sports news world yesterday, when it came out that Alex Rodriguez tested positive in 2003. My first reaction: Great, now I have to hear about this for the next six months instead of actual baseball. I’m very tired of hearing about steroids in baseball, and I’m tired of talking about it. What I’d like to do in this post is lay out my (pretty simple) opinion on the whole mess, and be done with it. Hopefully forever.
I’ll leave it to others to decide what this news means for Alex Rodriguez. People will debate how his steroid use compares to Barry Bonds’s and Sammy Sosa’s, and where his career will ultimately rank in the history of the game when viewed through this new prism.
With the news that 104 players tested positive in 2003, it is clear that, while certainly not every player has used steroids, there are literally hundreds that have. To me, that makes it fairly difficult to point at guys like Bonds and Roger Clemens, as much as I dislike both of those men, and say, “You’re the villain.” I mean, they are villains, but not because they took steroids. If there is any villain in this mess, it’s Major League Baseball, for looking the other way for so long. The people running the league may not have known the extent of the problem, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that steroids weren’t even banned in baseball until 2004. As soon as high-profile questions were being asked about Mark McGwire’s “supplements” in 1998, an investigation should have been launched.
All that being said, here’s where I stand on the whole thing. First of all, the most important thing is for MLB to do everything it can to eradicate performance-enhancing drugs from the sport. Use whatever amount of insane money it takes (maybe even skim some of that $18 mil./year from Selig), and get the most advanced testing system in place. Some people argue: “Why not just make steroids legal instead of deluding ourselves that the game is ‘pure’.” I am strongly opposed to that stance. There are countless examples of the harm that these drugs do to a person’s body in the long-term. Players shouldn’t feel pressured to use these drugs in order to compete. Beyond that, so many fans have shown an outrage over steroid use, that the long-term health of the sport itself depends on convincing fans that the league has done everything it can to prevent it.
The other issue is how to assess the careers of “Steroid Era” players and decide who belongs in the Hall of Fame. 
Unfortunately, I think more investigations should be done to see who was using steroids and who wasn’t. The fans have a desire and a right to know those things. As for Hall of Fame decisions, I think you can take into account steroid use. Obviously, it’s a very complicated issue because you’ll rarely be completely sure if a player did or did not take steroids, or how much it may have helped them if they did. To me, if a player would have been Hall of Fame-caliber without steroids, like Bonds, Clemens, and A-Rod, then they should be in the Hall and their steroid use should be noted on their plaque and wherever else deemed necessary. If, on the other hand, the steroids most likely made them into a Hall-of-Famer, like McGwire and Sosa, then they shouldn’t get in.
So that’s my take, let’s move on. The Phils locked up Ryan Howard for 3 years and $54 million. It’s a good deal, the guy is a champion, after all.
There’s plenty of blame to go around in this whole steroids mess – certainly MLB has a lot to answer for, the players association has a ton more because it fought tooth and nail against MLB’s efforts to make steroids illegal and create penalties for illegal use. But the real blame lies with the players who took this crap. They, through their union, fought against penalties for taking banned substances for years (still the reason a first positive test doesn’t get you banned for life like it should) and whatever they did in baseball is permanently tained. Part of the fun in baseball for the fan is being able to compare present achievements with past achievements and they took that away from us. Plus, “legal” or “illegal” they knew what they were doing was wrong while they were doing it. And while part of me thinks it’s a little unfair that guys like Arod and Clemens get endlessly roasted while the “average” steriod player does not, part of me doesn’t care because it probably should be the best players with the big contracts who are the standard of what everyone else ought to be doing. Since we can’t change what happened, the only option is to go forward with rigorous testing and lifetime bans for first timers (like the olympics). And, just like the “dead ball” era, I think we need to acknowledge to future generations that this was the “steroid” era, with a simple notation in the hall of fame that says: *”Without singling out any player or record in particular, the achievements of this era were attained at a time when baseball had a widespread problem with performance enhancing drugs.”
Oh, and until I saw that horribly self-serving interview Arod gave I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that I was 100% positive that it would be utterly IMPOSSIBLE for Arod to be any more of a dbag than he already is. And I would have been incorrect.
And by the way, at least this interview conclusively established that steroids DO NOT make you less likely to choke in the clutch.
I think in the ten years I’ve known Cim, we’ve probably had over 10,000 arguments. It’s probably way over. I’ve won some and, unquestionably, I’ve lost some. But the day I finally convinced him that Arod is a choker, it may be in the top 20 happiest days of my life, the first ten involving sex (naturally).
Just to play devil’s advocate here and defend A-Rod a bit (god, i hate doing this): Say you’re Alex Rodriguez, a once-in-a-generation type of talent when it comes to hitting a baseball. All of a sudden, you see Brady freaking Anderson hit 50 home runs because he’s on steroids and you’re only hitting 45. Now you sign the biggest contract in the history of baseball, you have all the pressure that comes with, you KNOW you’re the best hitter alive, but you look around and see lesser players putting up better numbers than you. Not saying you would take steroids, but you wouldn’t consider it? Wouldn’t you maybe even think long and hard about it?
Stri, you did convince me on A-Rod being a choke artist, and I was pretty adamant that he was getting a raw deal. It was one of our longer-running ones, too, so it sucks to lose it. But, I know when I am beat. No matter what he does from here on out, there should be no doubt that in the first 12 years of his career he may have had the largest discrepancy between his “non-clutch” performance and his “clutch” performance–define them any way you wish (2 outs, late-in-the-game, or postseason). It’s on the record–I was wrong, DEAD wrong.
See, I think it’s slightly different than what doogan said in a more malicious way. I think what happened is that guys like Bonds and Arod looked around and said, if Brady Anderson can hit 50 a year on roids, I can hit 70. I can challenge the single season home run record. I can challenge Aaron’s record. they got into what they could accomplish on the roids and what it would mean to their place in history. If they were just worried that their legit numbers wouldn’t look as good because of what others were doing they would have been pushing the union to drop its opposition to serious testing (because the best players hold all the power in the union). They got enamored with their own place in history and, ironically, that’s what’s being tarnished the most. If Bonds and Arod never take steriods they’re first round HOF’ers, unquestionably two of the best players of their era (and maybe all time). Now? One is an indicted felon who nobody will sign (even though he could probably still hit 40hrs with a .400+ on base percentage) and one will be remembered as an admitted steriod user who had every team he ever played for get worse when he arrived and better when he left. You’d almost feel bad for them if they didn’t have such terrible me first team second personalities (“I want my own PR department waaaaaaaaa.”)
Arod has always been overly concerned with what people think about him, one of the reasons I think he gets in his head in the clutch (call it the anti-manny effect). With that in mind the steriod scandal, the constant chants of “AROID”, signs with his picture and the word “Cheater” in big block letters has the potential to really mess him up, no?
Over/Under 40% – chance Arod has a down year (.265, 31, 90) because he is upset about this and gets in his own head;
Over/Under 16% – chance Arod goes totally to pieces (.240, 18, 68) and Girardi finds him curled up in the fetal position crying in the locker room after every game.
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