The Hot Corner spot is usually where we stick the silly things, the GIFs of people falling into a hotel fountain at the Winter Meetings, for example. But this is kind of an after-school-special one. Apologies.
Steroids and shared responsibility
It’s 2012, and steroids are in the news more than they’ve been since the peak of BALCO, mostly because all of the players on that stage are now up for Hall of Fame consideration. And the writers who were around then are, largely, the writers who are keeping stars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out. They all have their rationale for voting against PED users, but a few of them have been more vocal than others.
Which brings us to this excellent article by Barry Petchesky of Deadspin, in which he focuses on Tom Verducci’s take. It’s not so much a takedown of Verducci as it is an examination of how nuanced the issue of performance-enhancing drugs really is. It’s not black and white, even if that’s how it’s written up a lot of the time by baseball writers pretending to be life-long ethicists in the present, when they were something between ignorant and willfully abetting in the past.
Even the best were crossed up, and before they can untangle themselves, they’re tasked with evaluating the players who did them wrong.
Even if you’re sick of the steroids story, and have been for a decade, this is still a marvelous read.
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