Are Steroids Really Destroying Baseball?

Not since the Mitchell Report came out last winter have steroids grabbed the spotlight like this.

The revelation that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two types of steroids during survey testing in 2003 was a lead story on CNN.com, the local Chicago news, and has dominated blogs since the story broke yesterday.

Jayson Stark, one of the best baseball writers out there (in my estimation), wrote an uncharacteristically alarmist piece today saying, among other things, that A-Rod had destroyed baseball's history.

Really? Single-handedly?

I'm as guilty of hopping on this story as anyone, but the more I think about it, the less I think it should matter.

Here's a list of people who did steroids that people seem to care about: Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens. Arguably, a few others should be on there, but those are the universally agreed-upon figures.

The list of players who have actually done steroids or other PEDs? Way too long to print.

A-Rod was just one out of the 104 players who failed testing, yet only his name has been released. Why?

The simple answer is that unless you're some kind of hero, fans don't care. Jason Grimsely, Chuck Knoblauch, and Rondell White are all on the nearly-endless list of marginal players who took the cheaters' way out.

Look what good it did them: the vast majority will be relegated to baseball's scrap heap.

Knoblauch will be remembered for his role with the 1991 World Series-winning Minnesota Twins, a niche that he filled long before his using began.

The others won't be remembered at all; heck, I'm actively trying to forget Rondell White, who I honestly believe bought fakes.

One of the universal truths of sports is that the second cheater is the one that gets caught. In football, it's the player who throws the second punch that gets ejected. Testing began in 2003, so should we honestly believe that drug use began then, too?

The Olympics banned the use of steroids in 1967, which means the problem began long before then. Nationalistic hubris or not, the East Germans were accused of doing every 'roid in the book and admitted to (at least trying) most of them.

Steroids aren't a German invention, so there's no reason to believe their sellers had the market cornered on PEDs.

I'm not suggesting this is true, but it is not out of the question that Roger Maris, victim No. 1 of the Steroid Era, could have been a user himself. Testing didn't begin for another 40 years; it probably would have cleared out of his system by then.

Baseball had a culture of performance enhancement long before Andro, BALCO, the "Cream," the "Clear," or any of the other terms I wish I'd never heard of.

I get the reasons why we have to act surprised and horrified: It's illegal; if everyone doesn't do it, it becomes an unfair advantage for those who do; if kids do it, it could hurt or even kill them.

The truth is, however, the Steroid Era is more like the Steroid Epoch. It's here to stay.

Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus recently met with a steroid specialist to discuss the new generation of PEDs.

The products discussed are terrifying; cheaters are always one step ahead of testers, but if Dr. X2 is right, the cheaters are now three to four steps ahead, and gaining speed.

Chances are very good that we won't know which players are doing these designer steroids for 30-40 years, if the testing gets good enough to find them.

By that time, any record set by a supposedly clean player would have reached the sacred status that 61, 755, and 2,632 have all reached.

This isn't a call to stop testing for what we can find, or a plea to free A-Rod; he's a cheater and liar.

This is a call to reality. A-Rod didn't destroy baseball, and neither did Bonds, Clemens, McGwire or Sosa. You can even argue that McGwire and Sosa saved the game and made it into the empire it is today.

The game nearly died in 1994 and revenues didn't come back fully until 1998, when Mack and Sammy made summer the "Season of Kings."

British journalist Simon Kuper wrote about visiting a Russian soccer match shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in his superb book Soccer Against the Enemy.

Kuper was told before the match that both teams had bribed the officials, yet neither asked for special treatment.

It had become so customary to bribe the refs that both teams did it to ensure the game would be fairly adjudicated; they only cheated because they believed they had to.

I don't know if this is the direction baseball is headed in, but what I do know is that the drug problem extends far beyond these isolated cases and it isn't going away soon.

Perhaps it's time to lose the puritanical outrage and accept the fact that professional athletes are the products of modern chemistry as much as they are the epitome of all that is human.