Infinite Monkeys

Dopers suck.

My stand on Bonds and his obvious juicing has actually softened a bit since I read Game of Shadows. Yeah, he's a prick of the highest order, but that's no reason to single him out for punishment when all of Major League Baseball is suspect. There are probably more players on steroids than off right now, and that's the fault of the league as a whole. No player -- not Bonds, not Palmeiro, not that poor no-name pitcher in AZ that was shunted out of baseball last year -- deserves to be the scapegoat.

At this point, the fairest thing would be for the league to give every player one season to get themselves detoxed, then institute a real drug testing and punishment policy with some teeth in it. Meanwhile, take all of the records and statistics, from Canseco to present day, and file them away in a big binder with an asterisk on it. Eveything from those years is dubious, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, there are plenty of drug-free guys that would end up in there, too, but that's the price you pay for standing by and watching Stanozolol take over the sport.

Still, a cheat is a cheat. If I had caught #756, I'd have sketched a big asterisk on it with a Sharpie. Then, I would sell the ball to anyone who swore it would be displayed prominently in Cooperstown.