Baseball

Let's see:

There is a very good reason why steroid use is so rampant in professional sports: because it pays. We are talking tens of millions - hundreds of millions - of dollars. An enormous amount of money. Under the circumstances, I might take steroids. So might you. Yes, I know, it makes your nuts small. It might kill you. It also might not, and we are talking a hundred million dollars.

Which means that the ONLY way for baseball to clean up this problem - and it has to be cleaned up and cleaned up NOW - is to adopt EXTREMELY strong measures and zero tolerance. A player caught using has to be banned for life, expunged from the record books AND fined his full salary for the entire period he is found to have been taking them, or MORE.

That may seem harsh, but I think it is the ONLY way to stop these guys from juicing themselves. They have way too much to gain, and the only way to stop it is to give them way too much to lose.

BUT I also think the law has to step in. It is not only not enough for MLB to police the situation, it is the rankest hypocrisy. Major League Baseball is every bit as guilty as the players. They knew this was happening and they intentionally ignored it because the shattering of home run records packed the stands and made them money. If Barry Bonds is expected to give up the money he made by being juiced, why should MLB keep the money THEY made by his being juiced?

I also think it's WAY past time that Congress ended baseball's anti-trust exemption. There is no earthly justification for baseball to continue being allowed to run as a monopoly. That exemption includes the expectation of responsibility and the expectation that they will act in the public interest and they have manifestly not done so. And one extra inducement to making them clean up their act might be a little REAL competition from OTHER people who play baseball. Personally, I would LOVE to see real independent Minor League clubs who did not exist for the sole purpose of being farm clubs for the Major Leagues, but existed entirely for the purpose of playing baseball, winning championships and making money. Like the Minor Leagues once were, before most of us were born.

Baseball is a great, great game. I love the game of baseball.

And I absolutely despise the organization that runs it.

The game is great.

The organization is so diseased that they have to have major surgery and they have to have it now.