Last night, it was announced that Major League Baseball would stop testing players for steroids and PEDs for the first time in nearly two decades as the agreement with the sport’s Joint Drug Program expired.
There has long been a debate over whether or not players who used Performance Enhancing Drugs should get a chance to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Just a few weeks ago, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were denied entry into the Hall of Fame, meaning that they are now no longer eligible to be voted in by baseball writers.
Now, Major League Baseball has decided to no longer test players for PEDs. This is a huge error by the league.
Firstly, the sport is already going through its first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike. This is just yet another bad break for baseball.
It’s almost like they need to divert attention from the lockout to something else in order to save the sport. This seems to be nothing but a mere distraction from all of the labor troubles and the ever-rising tensions between the league and the Player’s Association. Baseball is already hurting. The league is losing money and the sport is as irrelevant as ever. Fans are turning away rapidly and people are losing interest by the second. Other sports are crushing baseball in viewership and attendance.
Secondly, not testing for steroids means that the league is basically going to just let players cheat freely without any punishment. Now, other players are going to try to gain an unfair advantage on those who play the game clean and don’t use PEDs.
It’s like baseball is glorifying cheaters. First, they don’t punish the Astros and Red Sox like they should for their sign-stealing scandals. Now, they take away the only thing that determines whether or not players are playing clean or cheating. This means that sooner or later, players such as Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez may be inducted into Cooperstown, and that Bonds and Clemens could be voted in by the Veterans Committee.
It’s sad that baseball needs to turn to this in order to get fans interested in the game again, that this is what they think it takes to save the sport. The epic home run chase in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both of whom were on steroids, was what got fans back into baseball after the 94-95 strike. It’s a shame that the league thinks that more cheating is the only thing that can get baseball back on track.
Who knows what’ll happen next, but this just goes to show how desperate baseball is to become relevant again. Chris Rock really wasn’t joking when he said the sport was dying.
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