After Mark McGwire came out Monday and admitted to taking steroids during his playing career, baseball commissioner Bud Selig felt the need to recently proclaim that the steroid era is over.
From the New York Times:
“The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown,” Selig said in a statement. “The so-called steroid era — a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances — is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.”
Selig noted in the statement that in 2009, there were only two positive steroid tests in major league baseball out of 3,722 samples.
If only two positive tests came out of 3,722 samples, then the testing is a joke or players are finding better ways to mask the performance-enhancing drugs. There’s just no way those figures are correct and Selig should be ashamed of himself for actually believing that.
Selig wants everyone to move on because he doesn’t want his name to be synonymous with the steroid era. Well, too bad. He decided to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the problem over the past two decades and now he must pay for it.
I think baseball is finally moving in the right direction by having stricter testing in place. But that doesn’t mean I think the steroid era is over and instead of trying to rush the process, Selig should come to grips with the fact that it’s going to take the game a long time to get clean again (if it ever does, that is). He wants everyone to just forget about what happen and move on, but true baseball fans can’t and won’t allow that to happen.
Guys like Selig and McGwire need to slow down, take a step back and realize the magnitude of what they saying. They need to realize that fans are tired of having the covers pulled over their eyes and don’t want to be patronized with comments like, “the steroid era is over.” Because it’s not.
