Speaking of cheating A-Rod took steroids1 Haha, yes the redsox are truly better you stupid cheater yankees. Ban A-Rod please! Or should I say A-Roid?

buckeye1022 wrote: 1 He juiced when he was with the Rangers. 2 If you honestly believe no one for the Red Sox has taken steroids, then you're gullible. 3 If they banned everyone who has taken them, there will be about 5 players left in the majors.

Therefore everyone should be allowed to take dangeruos drugs?

Mercutioh wrote: no but no team should be feeling righteous about railing on other teams players.

Exactly. I'm not letting ANYONE off the hook. It was stupid, and I really can't understand why Hall of Fame players like Bonds, Clemens, and A-Rod would even consider taking them. They were great without them.

But, every team had probably 5 or more doing them at one time, and although I hate the Yankees, I get tired of everyone always dogging them because of all the players they've had that showed up on the list.

Once again, I'm not saying that all 104 should be left off the hook. I'm just saying, this whole thing was so huge that the media and their witch hunt on a few players is just stupid. Plus, considering baseball never even TESTED for them before 2003, and they didn't penalize anyone for it until 2004, technically in the rules of baseball they weren't doing anything wrong. Yes they're illegal and in court any of them could be in major trouble. But with the country in the shape it is now, I highly doubt the government or anyone is going to try to prosecute hundreds of players at once.

I agree that the list being hidden was despicable, and the fact that MLB only tested in 03 was to see how bad the problem was so they knew if they should test starting in 04 is stupid. They should have been testing all along, and there should have been no question about it. But since they didn't, I blame the commissioner, the owners, even the fans just as much as the players. Any of them had the power to stop it, either by stepping in and agreeing not to sign anyone who was implicated, to fans just not showing up until the game was clean.

And the incentive they have now to not keep doing them is some fairly harsh penalties. I believe if you fail 3 tests, you're out of baseball. Just one and it's about a quarter season suspension(without pay), and 2 is a season. No one, outside of the minor leaguers looking to break in or those with no brains, will even try them now.

Mercutioh wrote: Technically if the owners would have done that it would have been collusion and MLB would lose it's monopoly exemption

True, I didn't think that part through.

But I will venture to say that out of 30 franchises, 20-25 owners(at least) knew everything that was going on. One anonymous tip to the commissioner and the whole thing could have been over before it started, simply by putting in tougher testing and tougher penalties. But since the money was raking in from us fans, they looked the other way.

I was thinking about the best example to use for why this is as much MLB's fault as the players, and this is the best I could come up with. Imagine you're 16 and just recieved your driver's license. Your parents have put a strict 10 PM curfew on you getting home. However, they go to bed every night at 9:30. You get in every night at midnight, but your parents never catch you because they are failing to administer their rule. Then, one night they catch you, but they decide to let you off the hook for that time but start monitering then to see if it's a trend. By then, you've already broken the rule numerous times and gotten away with it, and now that they're finally watching you're probably not going to do it again for quite a while.

This is how I see steroids in baseball. Yes, they were banned. Yes, they were illegal. But without proper testing(not in place until 2003) and without proper punishment(not in place until 2004) what was there to stop the players from doing it?