Plain and simple the benefits still outweigh the risks for most players.

If only when an athlete is caught he could be forced to give all the money back.

Let’s be realistic. Fans only want two (2) things in their sport.

1. Their team to win, and
2. The game to be exiting.

Everything else is either unimportant, uninteresting or forgivable. All professional sports have 2 things in common:

1. A limited time period career, and
2. A bigger salary over a very limited lifetime for bigger producers.

Therefore, since HGH, Steroids and other Performance Enhancing Drugs act to improve a players statistics (such as Home Runs, Yards after Catch, Average Rushing Yards, etc.) players that don’t take Performance Enhancing Drugs are either (already tremendously talented and therefore are concerned about side effects etc.) or are idiots.

To think otherwise is foolish. I watch a game. I want to see yards, Homeruns, Touchdowns, hard hits etc., I don’t want to be bored by lackluster play. Let’s be realistic. Fans don’t care they want winners. Everything else (including an idol disappointing a fan on behalf of his child) is secondary or) unimportant.

I have heard parents being somewhat upset because their son idolized ARod. I have never heard a son care — as long as his idol played well.

Basically, better drugs means better players, which means more exiting games. Fans (if they care at all) will forgive anything for better play and more exiting games; particularly if their team wins.

Stergios

why do i speed when i drive? b/c i can, evcerybody else does it, it helps me get to where i want to be faster, chances are i won’t get caught, and if i do get caught, i can easily have my ticket fixed and can afford the consequences. exact same situation for pro athletes with peds. that’s america…you can do what you want, and if that gets you in trouble, if you have the $, you can get out of it. sad, but true. if i get caught speeding, i can make up some bs excuse. however, i simply tell the officer, “yep, i was speeding, i was in a hurry. sorry.” maybe i get let off, maybe i don’t. what really bothers me is why someone like manny never says, “you know what, this is a competitive environment, i have a lot of $ at stake and i cheated. i shouldn’t have, but i did, and i apologize for it.” simple.

i agree w/ joe strauss, we cannot be surprised if anyone gets busted for steroids just like i can’t be surprised if i get pulled over for speeding…

and, stergios is right…we want bigger, stronger, faster guys out there hitting homers, sprinting down the field, making big hits, throwing 110mph fastballs, etc. i don’t care if these idiots do roids and destroy themselves, i want entertainment. the only reason i hate this roids thing is b/c someday when my son is 14, he may be faced with the reality that if he doesn’t do peds, he may not make the high school jv squad. that’s what’s scary.

If you are asking what the fans want, this one wants ownership held accountable. PED’s will continue to be used until the owner gets fined for having a player on his roster who gets caught. And it must be a significant penalty. Perhaps loss of draft picks. Right now, owners get nothing but benefits from a player’s usage. Sure they can lose the player, but in most owner’s eyes, players are on the expense list. If they have success in their drugging, the owner benefits from extra production and fan appeal. If this player is caught the owner still reaps the prior benefit and doesn’t have to pay the player. Win-win. Punish the owners. That will work.

In answer to the question…I don’t have much to add to what you guys hit on. I’m just as big a nut as anyone in this world. Maybe the only difference is I at least try to be good to myself and my neighbor as I stumble along trying to be right and good. Maybe the difference is that in my job I cannot be tempted by the potential wage I earn. Thats locked in. I recieve roughly a $20.00 raise every year. The potential to make BIG MONEY in baseball can drive anyone in that profession to yield to something that could substantially increase your earning power. Some people are weaker than others and give in easily because they have no moral boundry when it comes to the possibilities of making big money. Someone once said that “THE “LOVE OF MONEY” IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL”. That seems to be the plain and simple truth of the matter.

There is only ONE way to get these drugs out of baseball…its simple…LIE DETECTOR TESTS

My 10-year old son hates A-Roid, Manny, Tejada, Clemens, Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield, and the hundreds of others who took the bait (and the cash). Why??? Because he can’t stand people who break the rules. He understands the reasons we have rules, so he plays by them. But when someone knowingly cheats, it drives him nuts.

I hate these guys, too, but for different reasons. I understand why they’re driven to cheat. The competitiveness of our society has this down side. Some would call it a dark side. But for me, these guys still represent heroes to the nation’s youth (Charles Barkley’s old denials notwithstanding), including my son.

We can’t just nonchalantly dismiss PEDs and say fans don’t care. Maybe some adults don’t care (though I do). The point is this game connects parents like myself to our kids, just like it did between my dad and I, and between my grandfather and my dad.

For a long time, I didn’t think they money end of baseball was a that big of a problem, except that the minors were (and still are) really getting screwed in the deal. But since money is driving the players to cheat in ways that greatly influence our country’s youth, it is a problem. Greed of money, the union, and the owners are all guilty of ruining the game for our nation’s youth. But ultimately, Manny, A-Rod, Bonds, and others have to look at themselves in the mirror and admit it was their generation and lack of integrity that ruined this game.

The game is headed toward becoming utterly unimportant, at least as a professional sport. In a way, that may be a good thing: to return baseball to its roots and away from the national spotlight. But if MLB has any kind of future with integrity, it must confront the problem as strongly as possible.

The current system in place is a political solution with the union. It is obvious this isn’t working well enough. The union must make much greater concessions if the sport is to survive at a professional level. I, for one, will gladly abandon my 4 decade love affair with the Cardinals if these changes don’t happen.

Taking PEDs is such a strong temptation for players. We tend to think of it as only the greedy guys who are already hitting 30 bombs a year taking them to hit 50 jacks. Think of bench player wanting to get in the lineup and being blocked by a user. Not only is his playing time suffering, but his salary will suffer too. Perhaps he has even put in the work, but not seen the results that he would have liked. A thought goes through his mind, “I’m not good enough to play at this level when everyone else is cheating. I want to play and I want to get paid. I need to do what everyone else is doing.”

I guess it’s too late to go back to the time when the worst we had to worry about was having a home run taken away for too much pine tar on the bat?

albert pujols busted for peds….that’s the worst headline we could see. he probably does them. not attacking him personally, but that’s what baseball has become. can’t trust anyone. sucks, but it is what it is…