This Is Why Alex Rodriguez Used Steroids...

From Jayson Stark (ESPN):

At times like this, I always tell the story of what it was like to follow Mark McGwire around in September 1998. I saw this man hit 17 of his 70 home runs that season. I saw records topple. I saw powerful numbers rise and fall.

But more than that, I measured the feat I was watching by who else showed up to catch the show. And by that I mean Bruce Springsteen. And Bruce Hornsby. And Barbara Walters. And MTV. And "Good Morning America." And many, many others just like them. They didn't join us in beautiful downtown St. Louis because they'd always wanted to see the Arch. They joined us because this wasn't a sports story -- this was a massive American story. This was a story that lifted itself out of the batter's box and plopped itself right down on Main Street. It was a story that appealed to Americans who didn't know a split-fingered fastball from a banana split. But they knew what the number 60 meant. They knew what 61 meant. They knew who Babe Ruth was. And they knew this was a phenomenon that linked Mark McGwire to the Bambino, that linked now to then, that linked this America to that America. That's what the home run record used to mean in our land. That's what baseball used to mean. But not anymore.

And that's the crime here. That's the tragedy. That's what we've lost. We've lost the opportunity for Alex Rodriguez to restore that: the meaning. The relevance. The power. The romance. He held that opportunity in his hands. And now it's gone. He was the one man on the planet with the chance to resuscitate the greatest record in sports. He was the one man on the planet with the chance to rebuild his sport's sacred bridge to the glory days. And now he'll never get that back, no matter how many more home run trots he makes.

This tacit perception of ballplayers is what drives them to steroid use. Stark is talking about Alex Rodriguez as if he's some sort of time machine. With every home run hit, to Stark and others like him, it's another cross-stitch in the fabric of time. Apparently, Stark wants A-Rod to serve as baseball's Doc Brown and collapse the past and the present, not with stolen plutonium, but with every swing of the bat.

To me, it's absurd to write an entire article about how A-Rod has ruined baseball's history—which Stark has done—without looking at how we—the fans—have contributed to its supposed decay.

Maybe looking at baseball players as if they were our own personal bridges to the past is part of the problem? Hell, if every home run I hit was seen as another brick in memory lane, I'd probably take steroids, too.

Chris Harihar writes for the iYankees Blog