What would I say to Oswalt? I would ask him why he didn’t say anything until now, because I simply do not believe that he was unaware of the extent of steroid use in the major leagues. In 2003, under a testing system that was designed so as to be remarkably easy to avoid being caught, 104 players tested positive anyway. MLB and the MLBPA want to spin this as 94+% of players were clean, but that’s not really true… it just means that 5+% either didn’t care about testing or weren’t smart enough to stop using detectable steroids in time.

I just don’t think it’s possible that you can go through college, the minors, and a multi-year pro career and not know how pervasive the use of PEDs is. So when any player, or coach, or team executive, or owner, or commissioner, or sports writer… when any of them climb onto that high horse and begin to lecture the latest Cheater du jour… I wonder why they’re on a high horse, instead of standing in front of a mirror. Until everyone from Bud Selig to Roy Oswalt to Mike Lupica stop trying to feed us crap and “come clean” this issue won’t even begin to be addressed.

PEDs are the mote in our eye. Baseball’s see-no-evil approach is the beam in theirs.

“The whole ‘Bonds has a big head’ angle is utter horseshit.”

Sure it is.

http://tylerc66.blogspot.com/2007/08/barry-bonds-before-after-steroids-pics.html

Speaking of Tommy John surgery, and your analogizing it to PED use, tell me how many athletes who have had it would prefer their pre-surgery physique or post-surgery physique. And now I learn from another commenter that perhaps you can get the same kind of effect you see in these pictures of Bonds from simply eating your vegetables. Another commenter wants to justify present day PED cheating by pointing to racial discrimination back in the 1930′s.

Wonderful stuff, guys.

However, something John said pointed out the ludicrousness of it – what if someone discovers that extract of turnip does the same thing as HGH? Do we move on to forbidding the eating of vegetables? Shall we impose a limit on training over a certain altitude?

I read somewhere (I think Bill James) where he was postulating that Babe Ruth had some sort of mental illness, thus his excessive drinking, and if he had had modern medicine and been on Prozac or somesuch, his career might’ve been longer. Would that have been cheating? That’s fooling with “nature”, isn’t it?

Cheating is King Kelly, or the 1919 White Sox. Not this foolishness.

The sophistry of these two know-nothings continues to remind how much trouble this country gets into by actually taking seriously the hot-air buffoonery of Yalies.

Dick the Butcher’s famous line from “Henry VI part 2 — “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. ” — comes to mind whenever over-educated mouth-pieces like this, takes it upon themselves to lecture people they know nothing about, on subjects and occupations they know even less about. For the express purpose of self-promotion.

It is outrageous for these two to promote a lunacy. As if any clear thinking person would believe that the so-called writers who fabricated wrongdoings out of whole cloth in the first place, and helped transform the Alex Rodriguez’ and Barry Bonds of the world, into scoundrels in the process, know exactly how to make it all good, and in fact will make it all good.

If only they take the advice so generously proffered by Messieurs Zelinsky and Johnson. Apologize. Supplicate. Crawl. Slither. That will make it all better and they might get voted into the Baseball Writers Hall of Fantasy. These two sound like a couple of wannabe script writers. “Just do exactly as we say and nobody will get hurt.”

Wrong answer Yale boys. Its not about steroids. It is not about cheating. It is not about baseball. It is not about saving the children and it is certainly not about integrity.

This multi-front assault on baseball players is nothing more than blatant revenge, persecution, and continued humiliation of their physical and financial betters. It is how the small and the petty, get payback on those who they do not like and wish to judge according to some credo to which only they are privy. Envy and Greed. Major League Baseball has, is, and will continue to be an institution of exclusion.

The NFL has surpassed MLB in popularity and enthusiasm. Nothing better contrasts the two more than in the philosophy in which the two sports receive members into the hall of fame. While the NFL looks for ways to enshrine their most accomplished athletes, MLB looks for ways to exclude their best.

If my life depended upon winning a series of games, I sure as hell would want to pick from a pool that included Joe Jackson, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez rather than Charles Commisky, Cap Anson and a bunch of umpires. Under Bud Selig, the Hall of Fame threatens to devolve into baseball’s version of Augusta Country Club. And membership has little to do with accomplishment. It has to do with fulfilling some envious hack media personality’s fantasy.

I wonder if you even read what I wrote.

Oswalt puts his health at risk by being a professional athlete. The point at which he has decided he’s willing to go to is already a personal choice, and he makes it every day. The bloated hulk you describe doesn’t exist, by the way. The whole “Bonds has a big head” angle is utter horseshit. I’ve written about that some dozen or more times, as have many others.

Being a professional athlete is to be at risk. Many ex-athletes will tell you of the damage they’ve inflicted upon themselves in pursuit of their dreams, as will most construction workers, by the way. Taking risks is part of any pursuit of excellence, and for you, or by your insinuation, Oswalt to suggest that he is harmed because one player will take greater risks than you is patently absurd. Of course some players will go farther in pursuit of their goals. Is that a surprise?

I’d ask Oswalt how he feels about pain killers, or amphetamines, or surgery, or training in a hyperbaric chamber, or at altitude, or with natural steroid supplements, or with a doctors prescription for hormonal supplements. The list of things players do –and have done– to improve their performance borders on the absurd, and again, for whatever reasons you or anyone want to use, steroids has become THE scourge.

I’d ask you to consider why? Because they’re illegal? Horseshit. Amphetamine use has been illegal for most o my adult life, and baseball teams used to keep them in jelly bean jars in the clubhouse. Why wasn’t Roy Oswalt up in arms about that? Addiction to speed, which almost always includes an addiction to downers as well; ranks as one of the most debilitating and difficult to overcome. Meth is considered THE community killer, one of the worst drugs out there. Where is the outrage over all of the records that were set in the 60′s and the 70′s by players who would not have been able to take the field without it?

I’m asking you, asking all of my readers, to consider things differently. Instead of thinking about who was cheating, ask yourself why steroids has become THE issue? If all you want to do is blame and castigate the “cheaters” then you’ve come to the wrong place.

Let’s say you were Mark McGwire’s teammate. You watched him go through four consecutive injury plagued seasons, watched him suffer, watched the team missing him. And now Mark comes to you and says that he’s found something that is helping stay strong and healthy and able to play through pain –the mantra of the pro athlete– and now he knows that he will be able to help the team win the way he’s always wanted to.

What would you tell Mark McGwire? Would you tell him that you wouldn’t want to be his teammate? You wouldn’t want him hitting 50 or 60 home runs, helping your team try and win a championship? Would you tell him that he shouldn’t do whatever he can to be the best baseball player he could, and have the kind of career HE dreams of? Would you sacrifice YOUR dreams for HIS long-term health considerations?

It’s an extremely slippery slope to say that steroids are wrong, but Tommy John surgery is OK. People die in surgery all the time. Curt Schilling helped the Red Sox win a championship in 2004 by using massive amounts of painkillers, almost ending his career, and he was lauded as a hero. Why is that?

Ask yourself who has decided what’s OK and what’s not.