Steroids or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Loathe The List

David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez join Sosa, A-Rod, and Bonds as players named on the now infamous list.

But let's be clear about this list (that's not even supposed to exist). It was a voluntary testing program to learn how wide-spread performance enhancing drug (PED) use was in major league baseball. We don't know how wide spread, we don't know if there were other lists, but it is important to remember that at the time, many of the PEDs that players tested positive for WERE NOT banned.

Another thing about the list: It is not a guide to who used steroids in the majors. Some of the players on the ever-blessed list tested positive for items that you can buy at a drug store and weren't banned by major league baseball until 2005.

So, before we judge anybody—and I'm including my least favorite player in all of baseball Alex Rodriguez in this—we have to know what they took, for how long, and why.

To automatically judge based on a name on a list...did we learn nothing from Joe McCarthy? His "list" of card-carrying communists was a farce. This list is a little more serious, but it doesn't discriminate between a legit 'roid user and someone who used something that wasn't banned at the time to get over an injury.

Quite frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing about steroids in baseball. The only people who really care about perpetuating this nonsense is the media. The fans, the players, and everyone else would just like to move on. The media won't let us.

I'd like to see whoever is leaking these names step forward and claim responsibility. That @%*hole should be in jail. No one seems to have compunctions that the way we're getting information about this list is ILLEGAL. 

Doesn't anyone wonder why, if David Ortiz was juicing in 2003, his post-season batting average was below the Mendoza line? Anybody else wonder if Ortiz's bat heated up by getting a different batting coach and having Manny Ramirez hitting behind him? Is that so terribly illogical that a 27-year-old baseball player could discover his swing after going to a new club?

Gee. What a novel idea.

Barry Bonds got huge. He was quite literally a Giant. That is not natural. Ortiz had a seemingly natural progression and hey...he's in the middle of what looks like a natural digression.

This is all part of the history of baseball. Way back in the early days of the sport, pitchers would do all sorts of things to a ball to keep it from being hittable, including, but not limited to spitting on the ball, stepping on it, scratching it up, and doing anything they could to make it that much harder to hit.

Pitchers don't do that anymore. It's no longer within the boundries of the rules to throw a spit-ball. But do we look at these great pitchers of old with any less admiration?

Do we put asterisks next to their pitching stats with things like:

Ed Walsh, record for lowest career ERA at 1.82*

*used spitball and other pitches now considered illegal by the MLB

Heck No.

That's ridiculous, it's overkill, and it's like punishing someone in prohibition times who drank before the law passed. A judge would laugh you out of the court room if you tried to push through a case like that.

Because if it wasn't illegal when you did it, then you didn't break the law.

It's the same with these players. Habitual juicers...I have more of an issue with them, but if they weren't breaking the rules, they don't deserve to be punished. Period.

We don't call for discrediting of men who had questionable practices before it was illegal, why should we do it now?

It's certainly something to think about. It's not a black and white issue, and it's not something to be judged without all sides of the story.

Do your research. The media will not tell you all the facts and you can't trust the TV. You have to look for yourself. How many people know what that list is and why none of the names are supposed to be released? How many people know that the players weren't doing anything against the rules at the time of the test?

As fans, we have a responsibility to look into the stories we are fed every day. We have a responsibility to read and learn and make our own decisions. As for me, I'm behind Papi 100%. I'm betting it comes out that he was not a habitual juicer, and he might be one of the ones who used something over the counter he didn't even know was a PED, or didn't know it'd be banned later.