I don’t like steroids in sports even though it makes humans do awesome things, things that they couldn’t quite get to before. The deeds themselves aren’t super human but the frequency is, night after night of high stress 100mph fastballs, 70 odd home runs in a season or playing those extra 3 years. I’m only talking about baseball because it doesn’t seem to concern other sports even though without the substances used Football wouldn’t exist as we know it. Every player would be suspended and fined.What I want to talk about here though is incentive to not do the performance enhancers. What would make an athlete stop? In the past year we saw Manny Ramirez take the fall and get suspended 50 games that didn’t hurt his team. Why Manny? Who did he forget to pay off? Anyway, he lost playing time, he lost opportunities to set records and to make money and his name will forever be linked to roids and this era of not money ball but juice ball. (Should a General Manager be hailed as making due with no payroll when his stars Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada have both admitted to or are heavily linked to steroids?)

The point I wanted to get to is the cost for being caught should be heavier and matter in a real way to teams. They say hit ‘em where it hurts in the pocket but I would say these guys know that they will make more money and eventually get a bigger contract. I propose that a player who gets caught should be banned from the play offs. This would show fans a player’s true colors and ultimately an owner’s as well. People would get to see if the owner wants to win or just have a star who can sell regular season tickets. It would also add some vinegar to a player like Andy Pettite who claimed he was just trying to heal faster to help his team. It’s a lame excuse anyway because aren’t all athletes competitive by nature? (excluding Ricky Williams who just wants to work a Radio Shack and get high with Lenny Kravitz but that’s football) It’s as lame as David Ortiz claiming he didn’t know why he tested positive a few years ago. The incentive not to cheat has to be stronger than the reward of cheating. Maybe a player should be liable for breach of contract if they test positive and be responsible for paying back everything over the league minimum. This may not change a thing of course because the Player’s Association will find some way of canonizing every player who tests positive for HGH, testosterone, estrogen, or whatever it is they look for; I don’t have to be an expert in this field because I’m not getting paid for it.

I don’t know if athletes can see what can happen to them outside the game either, look at Ken Caminiti, dead at 41. This was an athlete, an MVP baseball player not your fat, lazy dad who drinks beer and lard all night long. Maybe the solution is to have the game played by robots.

RIP Ken