Friday, March 25, 2005
Steroids
I don't see what the big deal is with steroids. What's the big deal? The idea that performance enhancing drugs somehow diminish the glory of baseball is ridiculous. The whole point is entertainment. If people are more entertained by hugely bemuscled athletes than scrawny ones, so be it. You could have robots dressed up as Americans out there at bat, what's the goddam difference?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is my counter:
4 comments:
The big deal is that steroids have been deemed illegal for whatever reason. I think it does diminish the glory of, say a Mark McGuire, when I find out that he was on steroids because the rest of the players were trying to follow the rules and as a result were worse players.
Of course, then there's also the negative effects of steroids, which, personally I don't care if all those guys' balls shrink, but I don't want them doing that kind of damage to themselves in order to entertain me.
Now Darryl Strawberry...that's a whole different story.
My kids (someday anyway) will want to be glorious, just like the assholes on TV who use drugs and do irreparable damage to their own bodies just to out do the other guys on their own team. Even if we make steroids completely legal, they do horrible things to your liver and other internal organs with prolonged use at the levels you need to get the kind of difference these guys get. That is the reason they are illegal. That is the reason I don't want my kids to look up to these self centered jerks. That is why I hope they and their dealers and their coaches and their trainers all end up in prison.
Me
having grown up around the sport of boxing, the best analogy i can think of is you wouldn't pit a light-welterweight against a heavyweight. sport should be a level playing field. steroids are so varied you can never tell who has what advantage, so what's the point of competition?
there is an authority higher than united states laws. it's even higher that the constitution. it's called your conscience. it's a God (or nature) given gift that allows one to use his intellect to determine what's right and wrong. giving up that prerogative--by doing something unethical but legal, or not doing something you believe to be right just because it's illegal--is an act which changes you from a thinking, rational human being into a slave of conformity and mindless rules, which may or may not be appropriate by happenstance.
you may disagree, kelly, with the appropriateness of steroid use, but if your only consideration is legality, that's weak. regarding their livers, their health is something that's theirs; if they're willing to sacrifice it to achieve some end, how dare you try an stop them? can you say it’s unacceptable for the Struldbrugs in Gulliver's Travels to drink the potion that makes them immortal, but blind? Let them choose immortality, if they think blindness is worth it—that’s what American freedom is all about: choices.
i consider the argument about fair play to be much stronger, dariau. although, i have to say that the rules of the actual game are so much more important than the rules of training, it's just not a reasonable comparison. that's like saying it's not fair for kids to use ritalin cause then the SATs aren't on a level playing field.
and rachel: there are the major leagues and the minor leagues, but they’re not separated by weight class, but rather by worth.
Post a Comment