Baseball isn't what it used to be. A lot of sports aren't. It's almost every week now I read in the news of one more sport great who used performance-enhancing drugs. Today David Ortiz was added to the list. I mean really Big Papi? You're so lovable. It's been going on for years now, and I think I might be to the point where I just don't want to know anymore. And yet, it's important  that these cheaters are made public, there should be a stigma added to them in order to save sports as we know it.

I blame the money. In 1997 98 baseball players made over $8 million dollars. Drugs are very tempting when you have such a huge amount of expectation on you. And for the players not making that much money, drugs are the simplest way to enter that salary bracket. When so much money is at stake, how surprised can we really be? For all of the 1990s we just turned our heads, preferring to watch the balls rocket out of the park than pointing our binoculars at the highway like veins popping out of every inch of skin. Seriously, was there any doubt Barry Bonds wasn't doping?



What drives someone to cheat? Is it the promise of easy success? Is it the fault of the players or the system? Most likely both.

What bugs me about hearing about Ortiz, Manny, and Alex Rodriguez all doping in 2003 is that they were promised upon testing that the results were strictly anonymous and would never be released to the public. In my eyes, by leaking these names the lawyers are disobeying the contractual agreement. There are 104 other players who tested positive in the same round of testing. What should be done now? Since some were leaked, shouldn't they all be leaked? Or should the list be burned? It is certainly a dilemma, though I don't know if I have the heart to see 100 other players (surely some of whom I love) follow suit.

Maybe it would be simpler to demolish every contract, every baseball stadium, and even the hall of fame and start new. Or maybe we could become a soccer country and finally start calling it football.