With all of the talk going on about baseball and steroids, I feel a need to express my opinion.
There is and always will be one person responsible for taking steroids and that is the player. Everyone keeps wanting to say that it’s the league’s fault, it the owner’s fault, it’s the union’s fault… that’s a bunch of crap. Unless players were strapped down to tables and forced to take injections, the fault falls no further than the player.
A player must make a conscious decision to take a performance enhancing substance… it’s not something you accidentally do.
Did the league and union screw up by not testing it for drugs appropriately? Most definitely. It is just silly though to turn that into it being the league’s fault for not having rules preventing cheating. If you gave any of the cheaters truth serum, they would all admit that they were cheating and looking for an unnatural competitive advantage – there are no two ways about it.
Just because there are no laws on the books saying that I am not explicitly allowed to drill a hole in my head, that doesn’t give me the go-ahead to do it. If I go and do it, can I then blame the government for not preventing me from doing it?
The fault for taking steroids falls squarely with the players. The fault for allowing it to become such a widespread problem – everyone (mostly the players and the union).
