from Amazon
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Is PED out of baseball?
Poz likes to believe based on incentives.
No, there’s something more here: Massive, massive public pressure. If a player is caught taking steroids in baseball, he’s disgraced. If he’s a great player, he will get humiliated in the Hall of Fame balloting. If he’s a good player, he will get savaged in the media and by fans. If he’s a mediocre player, he will find it hard to get work—teams don’t need that sort of publicity anymore. We’ve seen this happen. We know it’s real. And this sort of real public pressure is not there in football for many logical and illogical reason.
In baseball, the public pressure is so intense that, I think, it has transcended reason and fairness and perspective.
I can mostly accept this among a certain class of players, and Poz agrees that:
Oh, I’m sure there are spare players who are still using, whose careers are on the brink or who just believe they are too smart to get caught. But baseball has ALWAYS had those players willing to push the edge.
But I have to believe that those outside of USA/Canada have much different incentives. Can I presume that in the DR, this phony outrage of PED+baseball is a non-story? As Poz points out, MLB and NFL are treated much differently with regards to PED.
When the “imports” (CFL term) come to MLB, maybe by that time, they’ll be off the juice, and so, Poz is right.
At the least I think, perhaps PED-as-a-major-story-in-MLB is no longer a story. That cherry’s been popped.