For years now we have listened to the ole heads ramble on about the pureness and goodness of baseball. You know the narrated story of the boy playing sandlot baseball and going to the ballpark with his dad. With the hot dogs, peanuts, the organ playing and the stadium announcer calling the plays. We as fans "sometimes" have this Norman Rockwell image of just what baseball should be, instead of what it really is.

Baseball has been around a long time. There have been many changes in the world that have had an affect on this sport. Two World Wars, The Great Depression, gambling scandals and players strikes. There have also been good things like racial integration, players unions (retirement plans) United Way and other charities that include community involvement.

Now we have this question of steroids and HGH and what to do about them. We also have this other matter of ethics to deal with: Is it a mortal (baseball) sin to use performance enhancing drugs? If these drugs were available to ball players in 1925, do you think baseball would have had a problem with fans calling out their heroes for cheating? The real problem is the fact that someone invented these drugs in the first place and they've been rather readily available. I hope it's not a shock to you, but steroids were available in my high school in the mid 1970's. So they had to be available at the professional level of sports before then even.

There have always been performance enhancing drugs in sports. They might not have been steroids but cocaine or amphetamines (known as greenies among baseball players). Heck, there's even a ridiculously high rate of players these days who have prescriptions for ADHD, which is obviously not because they need it, but because they're using it as an edge to concentrate.

I think that some of those who have used these drugs may have started out thinking that it was a new - but not illegal - innovation that would give them an edge. But by the time the 1990's came around, it became that involvement of any kind of performance enhancing drugs somehow had to be deliberate and malicious in nature, rather than innovative. So there is no sympathy for anyone currently playing the game to be using performance enhancing drugs.

So let me get this straight. Now we find out about A-Rod, testing positive for steroids, six years after the fact, and there were no disciplinary standards set in place for them at that time of the test.

Right?  

This was supposed to be a survey test that took place in 2003 and was intended to be nondisciplinary and anonymous.

Right?

SI should be sued for defamation of character, not that I am an A-Rod fan. I could care less about the fall-out gossip from the Steroid era. It's become more like the McCarthy Era with ballplayers being blacklisted for getting close to some sacred record, as it brings out the bias and hate that is cloaked behind what some ole heads image of baseball should be.

The biggest question is going to be not where it stopped, but where it started. Who was the first baseball player to use steroids? This is where we must draw that line in the sand and say: The Steroid Era began here and from this point forward, until a full ban is in place, all baseball records will be marked with an asterisk.

Bud Selig should step up to the microphone and show the baseball world that he does have a backbone and ban all performance enhancing drugs. If he can't do that then he should do the decent thing and step down as baseball commissioner.

That's pretty much my opinion on the topic of steroids. What's yours?