Archive for the 'Baseball' Category

How to Think about Baseball Players and Steroids

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

Even though baseball is the most historically conscious of all American sports, most of us check our thinking selves at the ballpark turnstiles. I first started writing about baseball history some 25 years ago, and I’ve been struck ever since by the emotions governing most fans’ relationship to the game, emotions born and nurtured in childhood that make fans resist the adult, business-dominated world of professional sports.

I don’t think performance-enhancing drugs are a good thing. I just don’t see how, if we want to root for winners above all else, we can ever expect players to spurn anything that can give them the extra edge. Here’s a piece I wrote about Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, drugs, and the Hall of Fame, published January 16 in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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