The True Test
Now that ARod has admitted using steroids during a 3-year period covering 2001 to 2003, the real test is at hand. Will baseball fans lend him the same generosity they have offered to other baseball players who have admitted using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs)?
When you consider the case of Andy Pettitte and how he has received far less negative press than those who have initially denied taking PEDs, were exposed and continue to deny taking PEDs like Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
Perhaps we can argue that ARod's situation is different because he initially denied ever using PEDs prior to any smoking gun. But now that there are 4 unnamed sources indicating a positive test in 2003, he is coming clean. With Pettitte, I don't recall even a trace of a rumor about him being a user.
No matter what, ARod's life just got a bit tougher.
The biggest news to me now is that out of the 104 players who tested positive for PEDs in 2003, we now know one name. I like Curt Schillings suggestion of publishing the other 103 names. But with that comes the almost certainty that many Red Sox players will be implicated including ones that were potentially a significant part of the 2004 season.
But we are beyond that now. Everyone is a suspect and the steroid-era has proven that most, if not all of what we witnessed over the past 20 years was artificially inflated.
Consider this, of the names in the top-10 career Home Runs, you have: #1 Bonds, #6 Sosa, #8 McGwire, #10 Palmeiro (and ARod #12).
For single season HR leaders, spots 1-6 are occupied by Bonds, McGwire and Sosa.
It is time to face it, the game we have enjoyed was kind of like professional wrestling. Enjoyable (to some) yet, not the real thing (at least they admit it)
My fear is that baseball is still loaded with PEDs. Perhaps not steroids, but human growth hormone and other drugs I know nothing about. How can we know? And how should we feel about the game of baseball if we have no assurances that we are watching something at least close to the real thing?
I've been thinking about this a bunch since testing was introduced back in 2005. I still very much enjoy baseball and for that I'm thankful, but that's not to say I watch it with the same approach. Now I'm far more skeptical and less likely to believe what I'm being told. For every mammoth home run I see hit, I can't help but wonder how it went as far as it did.