End the Witch Hunt: Leave the Other 103 Alone

In an ESPN.com article Monday, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling suggested that the names of all 104 Major League Baseball players who tested positive for steroids should be revealed. Illegally.

"In my opinion, if you don't do that, then the other 600-700 players are going to be guilty by association, forever," he said.

Why? Why will the other 600-700 players be forever guilty by association? Isn’t there something we can do to prevent this rampant, indiscriminate speculation?

Of course there is. We can stop speculating rampantly and indiscriminately.

It’s not the steroid users who are fueling this media frenzy in which players are seemingly guilty of cheating until proven innocent even though only one in seven or eight actually tested positive back in 2003. For the most part, it’s not their fellow players, or even managers, teams, or the league itself.

It’s us.

We are the ones who talk steroids every day. We are the ones who actively seek to tarnish out heroes’ reputations, accusing them of cheating because they dared to gain 15 pounds or follow a bad season with a good one.

When I say "we," I’m referring to all fans and members of the media. But our beloved Bleacher Report is certainly no exception.

On Monday, members of Bleacher Report’s MLB community—of which there are 5,738 members—received an email encouraging them to speculate on the identities of the “other 103,” as they are now known.

While I mistakenly—since now I can’t quote it directly—deleted the email out of anger, it essentially stated that any form of evidence was an acceptable prerequisite for such speculation.

Is this really what we should be doing? Listing whomever we suspect might have taken steroids despite not really having any evidence? If we care so much about salvaging the reputations of all those who did not take steroids, shouldn’t we refrain from accusing random players of cheating?

Is revealing the names of 103 players who were guaranteed that their positive test results would be kept private really the more ethical solution?

No, but it sure is the more exciting one. And that’s what’s keeping the steroid
scandal going.

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