Players have been using whatever they could get their hands on for decades. Drugs to keep them from being too tired to play, drugs to help them sleep after a late-night game, drugs to ease the pain so they can play — without drug use twenty or thirty or forty years ago, the greats play 140 games instead of 150 in a season, they play seven or eight innings instead of nine, they take a couple of games longer after injury to get back in the line-up. And those drugs were illegal, just not against the rules.

Now, I fully understand this is another class of drug. It’s not a matter of an extra ten games a season, or an extra three innings a week. It’s an extra ten or twenty or thirty home runs. It’s 240 innings pitched instead of 200. It’s playing at a high level until a player is 40 instead of 35. It does, somewhat, taint the records of baseball, but those records are more tainted by the blind eye turned to all this by the union and ownership of the game.

Who really cares any longer? I swore off baseball after the last strike, only to let myself be lured back by Cal Ripken (whose brother graces the GREATEST baseball card ever!!!) and the Big Mac/Sosa home run chase, only to swear off again after it became apparent these guys were on the juice. What makes me angry is that we all knew it — all of us fans who paid any attention to the game at all and understood anything about this stuff, we all knew it, just didn’t want to admit it.

And other than a playoff or World Series game here and there, I haven’t paid much attention to the game in years.

As for Congress, well, we’ve all known that august body has been made up of a bunch of buffoons for decades. This shouldn’t be a surprise. But, I suppose those good folks do have a bit of an interest in the game, given Congress’ granting of the anti-trust exemption granted to baseball (and the NFL, too).

No question, that’s lower on the totem pole, or should be, than so so so many other issues, but The Rocket gives those in Congress major face time with the media. And we all know being in Congress is all about face time and lining one’s own pockets, so this shouldn’t be a surprise either.

These pro athletes are the role models for our youth whether they like it or not (Charles). There are currently over 100,000 senior high athletes who are using steroids in one form or another. They have gotten the idea that they can do these roids and get recruited to college, then do more roids and get drafted, with a lucrative signing bonus. Then they do even more roids in order to retain that 7 or 8 figure contract.

There needs to be more investigating of, less immunity for, pro athletes who are using roids. Maybe that way, they’ll get the message that doing roids doesn’t pay – because right now it certainly does.