Great article from ESPN.com...

[Mik 0]

The New York Yankees, who make enough money to know better, want the rest of Jason Giambi's contract voided because he admitted to using what can fairly be called a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals.

 

Now before that laughing fit begins, listen for a moment here. The Yankees want the money, and the years, but mostly the money, so they can lavish it on tomorrow's flavor of the month, who may or may not have a steroid or two in his own closet.

 

And that's fine. That's baseball, and they're the Yankees, and they shouldn't depart from character just because there's a new hot spot in the Pax Seligiana.

 

But fair is fair. If they want Giambi's money back, they should also be asking for Gary Sheffield's money back, and the Giants Barry Bonds', and the A's Giambi's pre-Yankee money as well as Jose Canseco's, and the A's and Cardinals Mark McGwire's, and the Padres Ken Caminiti's money, wherever that is. And on and on and on.

 

Because if you're going to turn a serious health and safety issue into a full-bore witch hunt, you have to do it right and burn everyone at the stake.

 

And because fair is fair, the Yankees should return all the money they took in while benefiting from Giambi and Sheffield, and the A's, and the Padres, and the Cardinals, and the Giants, and on and on.

 

Especially the Giants. Never mind the money. They have to return an entire ballpark.

 

You see, while it is certainly fair game to decry Bonds' feeble explanation for allowing his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, free run of the machinery, and to ask for (but never get) asterisks for all these tainted records, what is not fair is for baseball to act like the despoiled virgin here, for Commissioner Bud to look all stricken and outraged as though someone had emptied a dump truck full of manure into his pool.

 

That's not just not fair, it's a bright and gleaming hypocrisy of the first magnitude.

 

You see, the players made their money out of Home Run Derby, but so did the owners. In fact, those homers largely fueled what Bud likes to call "baseball's renaissance," and only a certified nitwit (or a willful liar, take your pick) believes that the owners didn't know that it was Bill Nye The Science Guy marathons in every clubhouse in both leagues.

 

They knew. You know they knew. And, you'll be utterly unsurprised to discover, they liked it fine. They raised ticket prices and concessions prices and parking prices and shmata prices, all so that they could max out all the credit cards of all the people who came to see the homers.

 

Baseball cashed out on the clear and the cream and HGH and THG and all the other items in the Judas Priest Roadie Starter Kit. Cashed out good.

 

Well, fine. Only it costs to remount the moral high horse, and if it's going to be open season on the players' money, it must therefore be open season on the owners' money, too.

 

Only fans don't get to see these rebates, either. You liked the home runs, too, even when you suspected something was haywire. You laughed at Canseco when he said half the players in baseball were on the inventory for the same reason you laugh at Dave Chappelle when he recites the Periodic Table.

 

Because both guys are naturally funny, no matter what they are saying.

 

But Canseco, the big goofy galoot, may have been telling the truth, despite the big red nose and huge floppy shoes he took to wearing as his own career deteriorated.

 

Point is, you were warned, and you didn't care. Especially you Giant fans. Drug rumors have surrounded Bonds since 1998, and 16,000,000 of you walked into the new ballpark in five years just to watch him be him. You knew, and mostly you were fine with it, because you kept coming.

 

Fact is, we're all culpable, because we knew what was behind the curtain or had a real good guess. And no feigning innocence out there, either. There's more than one BALCO, remember. It's just the BALCO we know about is the only one we've found.

 

So everyone has to give back the money -- even the media, which helped the show by playing the lovely magician's assistant, Rita.

 

Either that, or we can call it a wash and move on, acknowledging that we were all in on it and failed by going along with the gag because, well, it was just so damned fun to watch.

 

This is just so that nobody has a mind to play the outraged victim here. We all bought in, and now that the investment has gone south, we don't get to pretend we were hoodwinked and ask for our admission price back.

 

Because the real lesson here is that eventually, all the chickens come home to roost, even if all you thought you were buying was the eggs. And it's a lesson we should all have to learn together, in the same classroom, from the same teacher.

 

Just as long as the teacher isn't Victor Conte.

[Dr. Tom 0]

I have to agree. The owners, dim as they might seem at times, had to have the same knowledge and suspicions as the fans. They benefited from players on steroids just as much as those players did. If one side is forced to take a financial hit, the other side should be also.

 

BTW, you should edit your post to include a link to the article and a credit to the author. Posting it is fine; posting it without proper credit is not.

[The Man in Blak 0]

I haven't seen any owners decrying steroid use by players. Have you seen any owners decrying steroid use by players?

[Dr. Tom 0]

They won't decry anything that makes them money.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Maybe George Steinbrenner will have a memo for us detailing how this is the Year of Not Doing Steroids Anymore

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Ha. When I started reading this article I was thinking the following:

 

"If they want Giambi's money back, they should also be asking for Gary Sheffield's money back, and the Giants Barry Bonds'..."

 

then I got to the paragraph:

If they want Giambi's money back, they should also be asking for Gary Sheffield's money back, and the Giants Barry Bonds', and the A's Giambi's pre-Yankee money as well as Jose Canseco's, and the A's and Cardinals Mark McGwire's, and the Padres Ken Caminiti's money, wherever that is. And on and on and on.

 

I'd love to see MLB try to get Caminiti's family to pony up the cash.

 

In addition, I think every ticket holder to a Steelers game during the mid-to-late '70s should get a full refund because nearly that whole team was roided up or on cocaine...

[The Man in Blak 0]

Here's a very provocative article against the steroid rage, written by Larry Mahnken at The Hardball Times:

 

-----------------------------------

 

When the story came out last week that Jason Giambi had admitted last year that he had knowingly used steroids, followed the next day by the news that Barry Bonds had admitted to using steroids as well, though he claimed it was unknowingly, my reaction was... nothing.

 

No outrage, no shock. No feeling of betrayal, no feeling of surprise. Not even a feeling of disappointment. No feeling whatsoever.

 

Could it be that this story has gone on so long, that the parties involved have been so long suspected, that I've just become numb to the whole thing -- tired of it?

 

No, it can't be that. When the Ken Caminiti story broke in 2002, my reaction was not much different. I simply didn't care. I didn't care in 2001 when people started questioning Barry Bonds, I didn't care in 1998 when they asked Mark McGwire what he was using. I didn't care in the early 90's when there started to be whispers that maybe there was something going on in baseball that was leading to this big home run surge. At no point along the way did I care whether or not any player was using steroids. Knowing that Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi both did isn't any different.

 

It's not that I'm jaded. If I was, then at least I'd feel some scorn towards Giambi and Bonds. I don't even feel that. I honestly couldn't care less whether they did or didn't; I couldn't care less how much it impacted their performance.

 

Am I just a bad person? I mean, I'm supposed to care, right? These guys cheated; they damaged the integrity of the game. It's the greatest scandal since the Black Sox, right? Why don't I care?

 

My feelings are best summed up by a sentiment expressed on the old sitcom "Mad About You". In one episode, the show's stars (Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt) get free cable, and find that they have the "blue channel". They're sitting in bed watching this, and Hunt turns to Reiser and says, "You know, they're not real." And he says, "You know, I don't care."

 

I don't watch baseball to see great athletes. I don't look at Barry Bonds and think, "Wow, he must have worked really hard to get that good." How they got the way they are is irrelevant to my enjoyment of their performance.

 

Unlike, I suppose, pretty much everyone, I don't consider steroid abuse to be cheating at baseball. It's cheating at working out, it's probably cheating other players out of playing time in some instances, and it's certainly cheating those players and teams out of money -- but it's not cheating at baseball. The positive effects of steroids are the same as exercise, just dramatically increased. When you take steroids, the ball doesn't jump over the fence on a bunt. Foul balls don't suddenly curve fair, and you can't suddenly hit any ball anywhere at any time. It makes you a better hitter, but you could achieve the same results with actual hard work. The results in the gym are a fraud, the results on the field are not, because the other team will be able to ascertain very quickly your physical attributes, and play you accordingly.

 

In contests of strict athletic skill, I can see, and agree, that steroid abuse is cheating. In weightlifting the point of the contest is to see who is stronger. Track is to see who's faster, or can jump further, or can throw further, and swimming is to see who can swim faster. But in baseball, the point of the contest is to score more runs than the other team, and not by displays of athletic prowess. Sure, athletic prowess helps, but the team that wins is not always the more athletic one. If the most athletic teams have an advantage in championships, in fact, I'd be surprised if it was a very large one. Technical skill is much more important than athletic prowess in baseball, I believe.

 

And none of that takes into account the fact that this is a professional sport, not an amateur competition. In theory, at least, the Olympics are supposed to be a contest thrown for the sake of the contest, and the glory of winning. Professional sports, on the other hand, are entertainment. The goal of them is not to find the best athlete, or the best team, but to entertain the fans and make them willing to part with their money -- consider the postseason format. If a player wants to do long-term harm to their bodies to make more money, or simply gain more fame, then to me that's their own personal choice. The consequences those choices have on their health is a satisfactory penalty to me.

 

This isn't a big scandal to me. I think collusion was vastly worse than steroid abuse is. A lot of fans look at that and think about greedy players, but consider this: for at least three seasons, major league baseball teams agreed to not try their hardest to win. Steroid abusers tried a little too hard to win. Which is worse?

 

I can see why others get upset by steroid abuse. I'm not saying that they shouldn't; I'm saying that I don't share their view of things. Maybe I'm alone on this, but if I'm not, then my viewpoint certainly isn't getting much airtime in this debate. According to the media, I should be outraged, shocked, and want to banish these players from the game, the Hall of Fame, and expunge their records from the books. In fact, I would be genuinely outraged if any of those things came to pass. Suspend abusers who test positive for a time, but don't banish them from the Hall or try to pretend that what they did didn't really happen. It did.

 

The party that has been really wronged here, I feel, is the players. Not the abusers, of course, but the clean players, and perhaps those who started using because they felt that it was necessary to do so to keep up with others that were using. It is they who have been cheated out of opportunities and money. It is up to them to decide how important it is to eliminate steroid abuse, how to find it, and how to punish it. This shouldn't be about the trust of the fans, it should be about protecting the players. This shouldn't be about sanitizing the world for our children -- if you don't want your kids using steroids then talk to them honestly about their effects.

 

I have my own ideas as to how steroid abuse should be handled -- I think testing should be heavily increased, and that penalties should be more preventative and corrective than punitive -- but I don't think it's really my business, though I'll give my support to efforts to eliminate steroid usage. But as a fan, my interest is in being entertained. I don't support using steroids; I'm not going to be more entertained by ballplayers who do use. But I'm not going to be less entertained if the players decide that steroids are something that they're okay with. I just don't care.

 

So can we talk about baseball again?