Another 700-foot smash home run!
Now that we're all sufficiently shocked -- shocked! -- that Our Baseball Heroes would ever dream of taking steroids or any other performance-enhancing drug (or, in some cases, non-performance enhancing drugs), let's temper our outrage by noting a couple of things:

Do you really think this hasn't been going on for years?

And, more importantly, what matters more to you: That Mark McGwire can jack 70 home runs or that he might be impotent -- or dead -- at 45?

I'm guessing, unless you're his new wife or that cute kid that he lugged around all of the 1998 season, you're a lot more interested in McGwire's homers than his future, or any athlete's future. My guess is that your life isn't diminished all the much by the fact that Lyle Alzado's not around to provide color commentary on WCW telecasts.

So, I have a hard time taking a position on this steroid issue. Is it wrong? Probably, because they're a controlled substance in the United States. But Uncle Sam has nothing to say about what anybody does in Mexico or the Caribbean. Is it cheating? Probably, except everybody else does it too. Is it going to ruin their health? Probably, even though semi-literate ballplayers think they know more than the nation's best medical minds. Do I have a personal feeling about it? Yeah, I think it sucks, but my first front-page story was about a college football player who died of a heart attack at 20. Think he was using anything? I asked. I didn't get an answer. I didn't ask again.

Steroids wouldn't have done much for my athletic life. I was a cross-country runner in high school. When I graduated, I was 5-7 and weighed 100 pounds. If I was on steroids, people probably wouldn't have noticed.

But the needle was rampant in my high school in the mid-1980s. One story comes to mind:

My junior year, our football team earned its first state playoff berth in nearly 14 years behind a swift, but somewhat undersized junior running back. He was about 5-8 and 140, and he ran the 100-meter dash in about 10.8 seconds, and was practically uncatchable, at least in our area. His senior year, he was a plodding AND somewhat undersized defensive end. He was 5-8 and 190, and couldn't break 12 in the 100. All the 'roids did was make him meaner, which was something he didn't really need. It's not like he was going to go on to athletic greatness anyway, but it sure as hell ruined his senior season.

So we as a society will say to baseball, "Hey, you guys shouldn't take drugs," while still clamoring for guys to hit 70 home runs and throw 101. Which means what we're really saying is this: "Whether you're dead at 45 doesn't really matter to us."