The Buzz on the Latest Steroid News

There's something comical about the sort of indignation shown by baseball writers whenever the topic of performance enhancing drugs comes up. At once determined to root out even the faintest whiff of steroidiana while being overcome with the vapors should they indeed discover it, they resemble nothing so much as a bunch of teenagers who've gone rooting through their parents' drawers hoping to find Dad's Playboys, and being traumatized when they find Mom's vibrator instead. They are shocked, shocked to discover gambling in this establishment, even as they howl that they're determined to find out that gambling's going on here.
Football writers, by comparison, have a much more relaxed approach to things. When a football player is accused of steroid use, they generally roll their eyes and say "Duh", or, in rare cases, break into pretzel-factory-having-sex-with-a-taffy-puller-in-a-tornado levels of illogic to try to deny that any football players have taken steroids, ever. (See, for example, the case of Brian Cushing, whose defenders think "cycling" is something you do with two wheels and a discounted Lance Armstrong spandex jersey).
But right now it's the baseball guys' turn again, as the Biogenesis investigation - which any sane individual would view as proof that baseball's ongoing vigilance about PEDs is actually working - has the Danny Knoblers of the world ready for the fainting couch. Look, kids, it's simple: the odds of BALCO being the only shop cooking up steroids for pro athletes, particularly in this day and age when HGH gets advertised next to lawn sasquatches in  in-flight magazines, were roughly zero. The chances that there would still be baseball players foolish or greedy enough to risk getting caught and suspended - as well as other athletes willing to take those same risks - for fame and fortune - were basically 100%. The fact that many of the high-profile names on the Biogenesis lists had already been dinged demonstrates that baseball's testing process is working. And the odds that not every individual who made contact with the place was immediately taking SCUD missiles' worth of deca durabolin right where  Mrs. Clemens reputedly got McNameedled are actually pretty good, if the actual lists being quoted are to be believed.
So to all the writers in a tizzy over this, I offer some advice: Close the drawer. Calm the hell down. Cease demanding we throw out the entire American system of jurisprudence in order to satisfy your lust for column inch filler. And go cover football for a while. You might find it relaxing.