Steroids Make You Stupid & Shrink Your Testicles

We bad.








Very bad.

Disappointed a lot of kids, even if they were Yankee fans.

But hey, we made a lot of money. And the most amazing thing of all? Dan Duquette was probably right. Maybe the Rocket was spent when he went to Toronto. I guess nobody figured a couple of bucks premium was all he'd need to augment his career.

This is a terrible time for baseball. Over fifty players were outed in the Mitchell report for steroid and HGH use; many because they wrote personal checks as payment for the goods. I told you that steroids make you stupid. At least none of the checks I've seen reproduced have the work "steroids" in the left hand memo line.

This is my solution to the whole era's problems.

Find some mechanism that would allow you to ask, under oath, the following question:

"Have you ever used, or are you currently using steroid XYZ, or HGH." Then round up everyone who has ever played baseball at the major league level since 1990, and ask them.

For everyone who says yes (not knowing whether you have evidence on them or not), I would simply put an asterisk next to their record. Simple. We don't know which of these achievements occurred through natural talent, or were enhanced, so we'll put an asterisk next to your name and records, your career stats.

That way, future voters for the Hall of Fame can make an informed choice.

Sure, some of the cheaters will get away. Blame their teammates for adopting the code of silence; by refusing to turn in the people whose enhanced gifts helped win games for you, or in many cases resulted in your replacement. Blame the owners for looking the other way, because the cash incentives for the team made doing the wrong thing a salve for the conscience. Blame the Union for somehow believing that protecting the rights of players translated into allowing them to ingest substances that enhanced their performance, but also killed some of them (probably Darryl Kile, Steve Bechsler, etc.)

Blame Bud Selig, who replaced Fay Vincent as baseball Commissioner. An owner appointed by other owners to ensure that their interests were protected. Selig is a guy who apparently believed that it was better to let juiced players swat at baseballs, than risk a strike by a union defending on privacy grounds the right of it's members to cheat. Yeah, that would've been a winning argument, don't you think? That would have been quite a risk, Bud. Heck, they could have stayed out on strike for a full three days trying to sell that crap to America, before they realized it lacked, hmm. Resonance. Yeah, resonance. But I'll tell you, it would have been the best thing you could have done for the kids in the Pioneer League.

Then, a representative from each of the above-named constituencies can explain to my son and daughter why the homer hit by Brian Roberts on July 31st, (Roberts made the Mitchell list for keeping a tab as a patron of the Juice Bar) beating Josh Beckett, should count. It was the first professional baseball game for one of the kids.

Perhaps one or two adults who could tell the difference between right and wrong, who could see through the collective fog of denial that this particular gathering of clans kept wrapped around themselves like a funeral shroud could have made a difference. I've misjudged the current Commissioner of baseball; I thought his legacy was going to be pandering and general incompetence. But for sheer cowardice and rooted self-interest, no one will be able to hold a candle to Bud. My hat's off to you. And I think when the Veteran's Committee places you into the Hall of Fame, you'll fit right up there with greedy, racist, cheap miserable SOB's already enshrined.

If you keep Shoeless Joe out of the Hall of Fame because he took money, returned it, and played his butt off; if you ban Buck Weaver because he attended two meetings of the Black Sox to argue how wrong it was, never took a dime, and played his heart out; then mocking this game by cheating deserves some sort of consequence.

An asterisk should suffice. It captures the exact measure of surprise and suspicion that should forever be attached to the records of these players. They cheated; maybe their entire career, maybe for two years, you just don't know since not a single one of the named players who wasn't indicted accepted the offer of the Mitchell Commission to come in and talk about the evidence and the allegations.

They cheated; they lied, and they lacked the testicles to own up to what they had done, and have been doing.

See? Steroids make you stupid and makes your testicles shrink.

Whether this particular generation of greedy bastards sees themselves as role models or not, they are.

Student athletes, gaze upon the faces of greed and arrogance in the picture accompanying this posting.

That isn't the thrill of competing at your highest level you see in their eyes. The dulled vacancy you see means that they have shed just enough of their moral core to take money for cheating, to take jobs from others who wouldn't otherwise have lost them; and to kick a game I grew up loving, warts and all, a few feet farther into the gutter.

Asterisk. Simple. Elegant. And just to be kind, we can let each of the players choose the color of the asterisk. Then, they can delude themselves into thinking it isn't an asterisk, it's a gold star.

That's the ticket.