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While everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop on perhaps as many as 22 players from the Biogenesis scandal, there is a very simple reason as to why this is a problem at all. Absolutely no one from the original wave of PED abusers from the 1990s was ever punished. Jason Giambi still plays in the majors. Andy Pettitte still pitches in the majors. Alex Rodriguez is due to return to action. Mark McGwire is allowed to coach.
If any and all such offenders had been banished from the game in the first place, we would not be seeing this second wave (and perhaps a repeat offender in A-Rod). If you commit plagiarism at your university or college, you are likely to be kicked out. I have been in temp work situations, where someone under the influence of booze and or pot was fired on the spot. For some odd reason, we are unwilling to hold major league ballplayers to the same standard as the real world.
There are three components as to why this problem has festered into a third decade. There is this WWE mentality of tolerating a freak show aspect to “sport.” Then there is the Las Vegas mentality of what goes on behind closed doors might stay behind closed doors, only in the case of legitimate sports, everything ends up distorted. Finally, there is the fantasy sports issue, where bloated numbers of Chosen Ones equal an ability to win some online pot of gold at the end of a season.
Medical science would have better served everyone better by taking a willing volunteer player in a controlled experimental MLB environment to play “Captain America” and show the effects of PEDs. That “super soldier” with the “serum” in him would have been known to all and we would not have had all these haphazard and underhanded attempts to circumvent the game. We would have learned the impact.
It is fascinating that a segment of the public who pays huge sums of money to watch baseball games in person still allows itself to be duped by players who are savvy in dealing with the media and know how to manipulate their self-image. There is no inherent right to play Major League Baseball. The only way to squelch this cheating behavior is outright banishment, otherwise we will keep hearing about Biogenesis-like investigations.
