I've been reading a lot about performance enhancing drugs, roids and the rest of the junk. Sports writers are flailing and that includes me. But some stuff troubles me, the idea of lowering moral standards. I don't like that.
I've read the Hall of Fame should eliminate their character clause for admission. I understand why someone would think this way but I disagree. I read where players should be allowed to take whatever drugs they want -- it's their bodies, they're mere entertainers. I read where there should be no penalties for prior use or use in the future. I read where I'm out of touch because I don't like people cheating or breaking the law or changing the basic conditions of competition -- that you need to be a chemical freak to compete.
And I have one thing to say. Wrong still means wrong, thank God. It's wrong to take that stuff. It's wrong to cheat and it's wrong to deceive and it's wrong to lie. Just plain wrong.
When did "wrong" become an outdated concept? It's important to acknowledge some things are just wrong. Wrong is a good word.
It's "wrong" to retroactively change statistics of so called "cheaters," when they were acting within the confines of the MLB rulebook.
It's "wrong" to go back and punish the relatively few players that have been outed, but not the far greater number of juiced players that were not.
It's "wrong" to forget that almost every pre-WWII hall-of-famer didn't face one black pitcher his entire career. Do we shelve their stats as well?
It's also "wrong" for a majority of the media to be so damn hypocritical about this issue. How naive can you get? Do you really think that sports figures - working for the fans, working for wins, working for millions of dollars - live atop a higher moral ground than the rest of us? Please, Lowell.
ts, you are right. Holier than thou is tiresome and doesn't address the core issues.
If there were 103 players who tested positive in 2003 how do you reconstruct wins, losses, outs, hits, runs, homeruns, etc. to exclude those 103 players? And what about the players who weren't caught? Myself, I'd say if we're going to clean up the record books then how about scratching out Gaylord Perry's career entirely? He was a cheater. For that matter, the game has a statistic for stolen bases. Perhaps baseball rules should change to disallow stolen bases, or at least come up with a more politically correct name. Maybe "stealth acquisition" or "hostile takeover". Remember those beloved stories of guys in scoreboards with binoculars stealing signs? All those teams' records should be thrown out. Silence the shot heard 'round the world.
Baseball can become like bicycle racing. They can play a season and then half the teams' records can be thrown out because of drugs or some other means of getting an unfair advantage.
Quite honestly, baseball was a lot more interesting when there were steroids. Now no record is ever a record because someone can come back in a year and accuse someone else of taking a drug. Human growth hormone isn't tested for so who's to say that half of major league baseball isn't taking at this very moment? Pretty soon players will be doping with genetic material. What then? Genetic screening?
No one in their right mind encourages his kid to look to athletes as role models. At best they're entertainers. And baseball is is less and less entertaining. If I want to watch hand-wringing I'll take up watching soap operas. If I want cheaters exposed and condemned I'll watch Maury Povitch.
Lowell, a lot of things are "wrong." Driving 35 in a 25 mph zone is "wrong." Murder is "wrong."
The point that I and many others have made on this issue is that the world is no so simple that you can just cast everything purely in terms of "right" and "wrong." You have to have context to determine just how bad some crimes are and what measures are appropriate to punish those who commit them.
You sound like Sarah Palin or George W Bush