Mickey Mantle: Cheater

He doesn't "have to". You keep saying that, but it's still wrong. Nobody's forcing anyone to face criminal liabilty.

As for whether he should have to "make a choice", who fucking says? We live in an imperfect world, we all to make implicit choices all the time that we probably think we shouldn't have to. The player who knows his competitor is using spit balls or corking bats "shouldn't have to" decide whether to do the same either. That statement could be said about any brand of cheating in any endeavor, not just PED use.

And, once again, I'd point out that your repeated bleatings about "criminal liability" and "prison time" are notably bereft of actual evidence. You still haven't shown a single example of an athlete who's been criminally prosecuted and jailed merely for PED use. If your gonna use that as a cornerstone of your argument here, shouldn't you be coming up with some cases where it's ...oh, I don't know ....actually happened?

 

The practical difference too is that there is serious question how much a corked bat even helps, while PEDs undeniably do. OK, I guess the Deadspin guys and some others maybe argue that they don't, but that's a patently ridiculous assertion.

 

Greenies, laser eye surgery...they help, too. They just aren't the targets of a crusade. The concept of steroids not prescribed to you being illegal has nothing to do with who gets an "unfair" advantage.

 

True, I think it's more a matter of the health problems especially with the unregulated drugs from Mexico and such.

 

Well, if drugs like this were legalized, we wouldn't have that issue; they'd be regulated and far less lethal.

 

Probably so, but I think that would create a marketing problem. We may be all cool and logical about it, but I think it would hurt baseball pretty severely in the eyes of the fan base to openly allow players to juice.

 

Oh, hell, baseball fucked up a one-float parade for decades in various ways and is more popular than ever. But you're right, there was absolutely no interest in baseball when Bonds, McGwire and Sosa were chasing home run records.

 

There would have been much less interest had baseball issued a press release of what they were taking. That's why they kept it a secret.

 

I think a steroid debate amid the home run chase would have led to the apogee of interest in baseball.

 

A "steroid debate" is an entirely different matter than "Barry Bonds credits an intense workout regimen and the strength supplement Stanazolol for his late-career power surge" and everything is out in the open. People wouldn't like that. They want to believe they're seeing the best of human capacity, not the best of a chemistry lab.

 

I think people just wanted to see homers. I don't think how people bulked up really became an issue until the Hooton case and the resultant opportunists in Congress turned things into this florid morality play. Congressional hearings, from McCarthy on back and forward, are usually pernicious in aim and fallacious in conclusion.

 

I see. So it's your opinion that the general public did not much care that all the home run records fell because of steroids.

Interesting.