One More Steroids Story. We Know. We're Sorry.

JW,

I'll be the first to admit that the post-2004 Red Sox overdid things a bit. The bandwagon jumping, the movie, the simultaneous success of Boston's other franchises--all contributed to the fact that a lot of people I know are positively gleeful about yesterday's news that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for PEDs the season before (and probably the season of) their championship. Forget the fact that the '03 and '04 Yankees were practically batting with giant syringes. The Red Sox are tainted, and we're reinstituting the curse.

Here's the thing, though: I just can't bring myself to care that the Sox were juicing. I watched every minute of that ALCS. Hell, I watched every minute of the Wild Card round and the World Series. Our twenty-five guys beat your twenty-five guys, period. I don't care if they did meth between innings. They won. I saw it.

Bear with me for a moment while I explain. More than any other game, baseball works on three distinct levels. Aesthetically, it's far and away the most pleasing of our major sports. Its sights, sounds, and smells are enshrined in the American experience, and while the fact of steroid use may offend our notion of purity (itself an absurdity), it doesn't change the perfection of the grass, the crispness of the uniforms, or the crack of the bat. Without the aesthetic beauty of baseball, the regular season wouldn't exist as a spectator event. The games mean nothing. Who would go?

Secondly, and most importantly for the purposes of our discussion, baseball works because we care who wins individual games . . . down the stretch and in the playoffs. As such, we're concerned about fairness. Or are we?! After all, it's no accident that the Pittsburgh Pirates haven't won the World Series since 1979. Consider the fact that the difference in 2009 payroll between the top spender (the Yankees) and the bottom (the Marlins) is over 164 million. In last season's NFL, by comparison, the spread was 68 million. In the NBA, it was 56. Simply put, the gripes of even a squeaky clean Yankees team would be nothing compared to those of the Milwaukee Brewers. They got outspent in 2004 by 155 million.

Finally, baseball works on a historical level. Even I'll admit that it's fun to sit around arguing about which era was more dominant, which players most clutch. Sadly, the very notion of comparing players from different eras is a fallacy. I know I'm not breaking any new ground here, but factors like the historical game's racial barrier, the vast improvement in conditioning regiments, and the watering down of the leagues through expansion (to name just a few) have made inter-era comparisons ridiculous. Hell, forget inter-era. The ballparks are different sizes! What, exactly, are we supposed to be comparing?

Rather than parse our many asterisks, future generations (quite comfortable with their own performance enhancing drugs, by the way) may wonder what the big deal was. After all, athlete are no longer role models so much as emblems of the highest possible financial and cultural success. And success requires sacrifices. Even ones that make the rest of us a little queasy.

-GM

GM,

I don't care for your attitude. Let's get some things straight. One, steroids have been on baseball's banned substance list since 1991. Well, so was cocaine, but few would consider that type of usage to be cheating the game of baseball. So there's an argument that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds did nothing but break the law and that they didn't actually cheat. It's a poor argument, but it has a hint of legitimacy. It wasn't until 2002 that the slowest, weakest, most indecisive commissioner I've seen in my lifetime, Bud Selig, managed to begin penalizing players for positive tests. Even then, it was a joke, but there was no mistaking it--baseball's stance was that the use of performance-enhancing drugs was cheating, just like a spitball or a corked bat.

Ask Ben Johnson, Floyd Landis, and the Michigan basketball program what happens when you cheat. All of a sudden, you didn't win! That's right! All of a sudden, there's some "retroactivity" in the bullpen. Not everyone on those Wolverines teams were cheaters, but as far as the NCAA and the university itself is concerned, those Final Four appearances in 1992 and 1993 didn't happen. I have a problem with your "our guys beat your guys" attitude--starting with the fact that you have no reason to be a Red Sox fan. But I disagree with it anyway. They scored more runs, but if you cheat, and you get caught cheating, no matter when, you don't win. It's only baseball's stubbornness that prevents them from taking away Alex Rodriguez's 2003 MVP award. He was caught cheating that year! Imagine if the Tour de France rules committee said, "Floyd, we realized you cheated and that your cheating probably allowed you to win, but we're gonna let you keep your title." Would anyone ever, ever have reason to believe in the legitimacy of a race again?! Would they even keep watching???

I demand the same type of integrity from baseball (and demanding that baseball keep up with professional cycling's character isn't asking all that much). My respect and interest for the game has withered significantly--not because players tried to get an edge, but because the sport has repeatedly failed to drop the hammer. To my knowledge, no member of the 2004 Red Sox has a positive test from 2004. The same goes for the 2007 club. As soon as they find one, though, they're stripped of their title in my mind, and baseball should impose the same penalty. It is a big deal.

Finally, to answer your point about fairness, I'll talk to you like I would a liberal:

Not everything is going to be equal. Some people are dealt better hands than others. Let's look to be fair first, equal never. There is a difference.

-JW