A_Roid

As a true fan of baseball for going on 25 years, the issue of Alex Rodriguez and his involvement with the "steroid era" is one of both concern and enlightenment. Far too long, baseball fans have had to become increasingly aware of their sports heroes' (specifically baseball) involvement in this dramatic frenzy of steroid news. While the fans have had to wonder if their heroes cheated the game, themselves, and the mass public, they've also begun to realize how prevalent and rampant this era was in baseball. My view is that the only way to move forward is to accept it, educate ourselves and our children as to why baseball players did this, and move on.

Throughout the history of time, human beings have tried new things in an effort to become better people, leaders, and innovators. This steroid era came at the brink of an exploding new market of the latest health fads. In the age of beautiful and buffed Hollywood stigma, the public embraced the face of this new wave of working out and GNC. We all want to be more alert, intelligent, attractive, healthy, faster, & stronger, and based on the market boom in the late 1990s of pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications which has yet to stop growing, I'd say the public is increasingly willing to pay for anything to make us better. Baseball players are no exception. There is a fine line and a ton of gray between what is considered legal/acceptable and what is not in the game of baseball. It is not as black and white as a player using steroids and therefore is not worthy of admiration, respect, or the Hall of Fame. Everyone has made mistakes in the past. Some of the greatest players in sports history have had drug problems and not been ideal citizens in the public eye (i.e.- Darryl Strawberry, Lawrence Taylor, Michael Phelps). Does the public eye weigh more heavily on steroids than say crack, cocaine, or marijuana? Performance-enhancing drugs, while dangerous, are not in the same category from a mind-altering negative standpoint, yet we hold different standards when one player gets in the news for drug use over steroid use. Rules are in place to prevent cheating of the game and steroid use is ultimately cheating. It is of this writer's opinion that players who used steroids should not be punished for an era that had no governing body to police and enforce its rules. MLB is ultimately at fault for dropping the ball on recognizing this early and doing something about it. It is of my opinion that MLB (and Bud Selig) chose to turn its head while steroid use became more and more prevalent during baseball's all-time attendance records and home run crazed fanbase. Aside from pointing the finger at MLB, it is now time to recognize the problem, address it, and drop this media driven witch-hunt on players who have used steroids.

People ask what kind of message these players are sending our children by using steroids. The message to our children is a simple one: baseball players used performance-enhancing drugs to get an edge in the game. No guidelines were established on what was acceptable to use and what was not until the problem was out of control. MLB has since recognized this reality and taken the appropriate steps from further tainting the game. Our kids understand that mistakes have been made and that it is not right to cheat or take drugs to get ahead in life. It is widely believed that over 50% of baseball players used some sort of performance-enhancing drugs during the period from 1990-2004. So the league was filled with half cheaters and half not. Fifteen years of statistics do not need to be replayed or erased, nor do asterisks need to be placed on these numbers. If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying was a common statement made growing up. Ultimately, the players who did play the game without cheating should be proud of themselves and their accomplishments, but we, the people, will never know who did cheat and who did not. All we can do is accept that the population, not excluding baseball, went through an era of performance-enhancing drugs, realized our mistakes with doing so, and decided to move away from this deterioration. It has become a staple of our evolution as people, fans, and sports icons, and we can only embrace it for what it was and move on. Baseball is far too historic to let a hiccup in the integrity of the game destroy its character. Now that A-rod has become A-roid, it is now time for baseball to take the necessary steps to enforce the rules. As fans, it is now time for us to let this issue die and resume enjoyment of the game. It is also time for the media to do the same.