Ambiguity and Baseball

Mitch Albom makes a valid point in the Detroit Free Press.

He gives two lists of statements, one supporting the position "Why Steroids Don't Matter" and the other supporting the position "Why Steroids Matter." Readers are asked to circle the statements they agree with, then compare the number of circled statements from each list.

"Bigger number is where you stand," Albom writes, using phrasing that, perhaps unintentionally, reflects the nature of the problem.

"And if that sounds like confusing, non-declarative, mixed signals," Albom concludes, "well, now you know how baseball came to this sorry point in the first place."

I couldn't agree more. It's the ambiguity that has existed in baseball on this issue for many years that has led the sport -- and others, as well -- to the predicament it faces.

Thomas Boswell says, in the Washington Post, that "Perhaps what is most chilling in the Mitchell report is the casual business-as-usual comments of general managers and scouts as they discuss what they assume is the steroid use of players."

When the report was released Thursday, commissioner Bud Selig "incredibly said ... he hadn't read [it]," Boswell points out, but "[t]he metastasizing problem was clear before the strike of '94, not several years after it, as the commissioner likes to rewrite history. The media couldn't prove it. Many fans were indifferent to it. But that doesn't excuse baseball for conveniently ignoring it."

Now, as Boswell concludes, "with its analysis of the past and its recommendations for the future, the Mitchell report gives baseball a choice: stop digging deeper into denial, throw away that damn shovel and grab this rope like it's your last hope."

In the coming years, the players who have been using steroids will face their own consequences when the performance-enhancing drugs have done their lethal work. The players have reaped the temporary benefits, but, as no less an authority than the Bible says, "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

Baseball must deal with that inheritance now. And it must try to understand the reasons why it stood idly by and allowed this to happen. And then take credible steps to clean up the mess.

Good luck with that.