Read This Now - Roid Rage

This piece is from last winter but it's point is still extremely valid and timely and as baseball's regular season draws to a close I'm wrapping back to say you should take a look and think about how we talk and think about the steroid era in the big leagues.

Craig Calcaterra links to a Matthew Artus piece on why we can't have an intelligent discussion about the topic.  Artus's point is that all the vilification going on means that there is no incentive for players to open up about the steroid era and we may never get around to figuring out how to think about baseball during this period, we lack a contest to discuss the players of this era as compared to all time greats (this becomes more important as we get in to the HoF candidacies of steroid era players).

I think Calcaterra makes an even more important and interesting argument in pointing out that MLB has led the way in making the main issue of the steroid era who used and who didn't and the press has just followed along.  No one has been willing to ask or answer the more interesting questions about what steroids mean or meant and how they effected the game.  He makes the damning point that MLB and the press are just sticking with the approach they took while steroid use ran rampant through the league in the 90's, lets sort of ignore it and then sweep it under the rug sums it up pretty well.  The Mitchell Report, in this light, was nothing more than an attempt to close the door on the subject and move along.

Like the Mitchell Report, the current take by most of the baseball press on steroids is lazy, misleading and close to useless.

It will only take you a few minutes to read the piece and it'll be worth the time, maybe it will even make you think a little bit.