Steriods....the ugly part of sports

While my posts to date have been about Arsenal, I have prefaced my Blog as a rants about many things, so here is one about the latest round of "hearings" about the steroid problem in baseball. I watched the hearings and came away as did many observers with the feeling that McGwire was a hiding something and frankly not doing a good job of it, that Schilling retracked from his usualy outspoken nature, that baseball in general is living in such a fantasy land that sometimes I wonder if steroids have not been taken by selig and fehr and completely distorted their ability to think rationally.

Steroids is a huge (pun intended) problem with professional sports. We mocked, yet watched in somewhat horror and awe, as the East German and Soviet teams won medal after medal in numerous olympics, their female atheletes at times looking more like offensive linemen than women. We stared in amazement when Ben Johnson BLEW away the field in the 100 meter dash, only to find out later that he failed a drug test. Scarey part was when you watched Ben Johnson destroy the world class field in the olympics you had to wonder in the back of your mind what was going on. While the olympics have many issues of their own, they have taken the proper stance with drug testing. No loop holes, no lawyers, no 5 strikes and you may be out....baseball has much to learn.

Watching the hearings, I felt as if I was watching a bunch of grown men who had been caught in the cookie jar and rather than admit it claimed there was no cookie jar to start with. McGwire the worst of the lot. I must preface this with stating that I have never been a McGwire fan. Being a Red Sox fan, the A's were a team I detested, the bash brothers were like two giants always waiting to pound your team into submission, twice they took the Red Sox behind the woodshed in ALCSs. I never got caught up in the chase for Maris, because I knew something was wrong. People said the baseballs were smaller, ball parks smaller, pitchers worse, etc etc. Yet no one talked about the fact that players like McGwire were noticibly different. How could a record that stood for so long before Maris broke it...by ONE home run, then be shattered by 9, then to be broken again a few years down the road. It was not the bats, the balls, the pitchers, it was the simple chemicals that players like McGwire was using to give themselves unfair levels of strength and power.

I personally hope McGwire never sees his plack in the hall of fame. Even those in St Louis are calling him what he is...a fraud: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/columnists.nsf/bryanburwell/story/EE4E22381B91C4AF86256FC8001A4613?OpenDocument

Shame on the players who gave us a strike and steroids, shame on us for always coming back for more.