Saturday, January 9, 2016

Time To Get Real On PEDS

Note: I wrote this on Wednesday, but couldn't get it edited and published until now. Sorry that it's a bit dated now.

PEDS are a part of the game and it's time that people deal with it.



Okay. I could leave it at that, but I have a few other things to say...

At this time there's a particular group of people I'm aiming this rant towards, and that's the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Do I like it that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, and countless other players have admitted to using or clearly were using something? No, I'm not. I'd love to believe every one of the baseball players I looked up to as a kid were clean and did what they did using only their God-given talent. But there's a problem with that.

See, contrary to what some may think, I'm not a fool. Wherever money is involved, there's bound to be people that are going to try and get their piece of the pie is any way possible. Our government broke treaties with Indians in order to get the land known today as the United States of America. There's a shady guy on the corner that's making his money by selling drugs, because there are people out there willing to part with a nice chunk of their money to get their hands on them. The area in which I grew up is willing to deal with a landfill and a new casino being built there in order to get more money pumped into the town's economy.

Whether it was the year 1998, 2008, 1908, or otherwise, I guarantee you there were people trying to figure out the simplest way for them to "get theirs". You want to know why cheating wasn't as well known back in the "gold ole days"? Two words.... "the" and "internet".

When I was a kid my parents got their news from two sources... the newspaper and the television. That meant the local paper (which, by the way, was only delivered to the house six days a week) and whatever station they were watching at 6:00pm. There was no Yahoo.com and it's reporters. ESPN was simply another television station that reported news a handful of times a day, instead of 24 hours a day 7 days a week on ESPN.com. Sports Illustrated was a magazine that you read monthly, instead of at all hours on any day of the week on the internet. Twitter? LOL! Get out of here!

"No, don't go. Where else would we get our news 140 characters at a time?"

Basically, we've gone from getting our news from a select few sources at specific times each day, to getting our news from dozens... if not hundreds... of sources any time we turn on our computers or smartphones. And that has led to thousands of reporters/bloggers starving for the smallest scrap of news, leading them to treat a rumor with little to no credibility as the truth.

The point is this... cheating has always been around, so to act like it's new and therefore those that have been caught cheating should be shunned is ridiculous. It is well-known that Ty Cobb was a jerk, so it's hardly a stretch of the imagination that he would have cheated in order to win. And is Mr. Cobb in the Hall of Fame? Of course!

I'm all for getting PEDs out of baseball, and out of sports entirely. I'm not one of those people that's going to say "put 'em all on drugs... the more home runs the better!" But for every Barry Bonds that's used a PED and got caught doing it, there are probably dozens of others that didn't get caught because they couldn't hit 700 home runs no matter what drug they shoved down their throats or injected into their butt.

I could be on the most insane drugs imaginable, but am I going to hit .300 in MLB? Oh heck no! Roger Clemens may have gotten a few more mphs on his fastball thanks to a PED, but the fact he could place that ball right on the corner of the plate consistently is still something to be in awe of.

And when it comes down to it the Baseball Hall of Fame is for entertainment. Not just for any entertainment, but for baseball entertainment. So the only question at this point should be this... did "so-and-so" entertain me that well on the baseball field? And if you answered "yes", then make the guy a plaque and add it to the Hall.

"Are you... "
Yeah, you know the line.

2 comments:

  1. Just read your Post Van Dusen. Well done and on the nose. Thank you.
    I don't like cheating in any sports event at all, and when I found out about someone cheating in any way...I would ask them gently not do it again, some took my advice and the dumb ones didn't.
    The main point is, I may not like it but the barn door is open and the horses are out. Can anyone tell me for sure, how many got into the Hall having used PEDS and we just don't know it? NO!
    So it is a FUBAR of the first order, but the answer to the problem isn't saying nobody that is proven or suspected of using PEDS etc., can no longer be in the Hall of Shame. They are there already.

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    Replies
    1. Bryan,

      Good work as usual. Hit a lot of high notes that I absolutely agree with. I've said it a million times, let them all in or none at all. Piazza is in and admitted to using the same drug that's keeping McGwire out.

      Floodgates are open ladies and gents

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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)