In the last five years interest in what happens on the field in baseball has waned. Quick, can you name the last five winners of the World Series? If you can you're a better fan than me, since my attention has steadily receded since the Golden Age of baseball in the early 2000s when big men hurled100 mph fast balls down at even bigger men who duly slapped them into the stratosphere 50-70 odd times a season, as per their contractual agreements.
My fanaticism for the NFL remains unchanged during this time span by the way, as I can still turn on the TV and watch Herculean feats of athleticism by unnaturally large individuals, or should one say "preternaturally" or perhaps even "supernaturally" large to avoid discussing the obvious. To wit: the NFL remains extremely entertaining because steroid use is condoned but the MLB has become very dull due to absurd hysteria. In the NFL it is not newsworthy when a 300lb man with 6% body fat chases down another fleet-footed dude without so much as pausing for air. The NFL has their own internal tests for steroid use and they assure us that everyone is clean, so it isn't an issue. The MLB could learn a lot from this one feels, just as they could learn a lot from the great American industry of pornography.
We can all surely agree that the adult film industry took a huge leap forward when plastic surgery was introduced as a common fixture. It then improved even more when Viagra was introduced. We watch pornography for the performance, and when performance-enhancers are allowed we logically cheer even louder because life just got a little better. No one wants a return to the natural days of 70s bush, portly men with unruly body hair, oddly shaped breasts, and labored wood. Times change and standards are raised. We expect our adult stars to work out, to landscape their bodies, and to enhance their erogenous zones by whatever means necessary in order to attain the Platonic ideal of two to five people fucking one another.
Here is the real philosophical meat of the essay: What is the real difference between watching baseball and watching porn? Is the one somehow imbued with metaphysical meaning, replete with symbolic import, while the other is just a fun way to while away the time with or without a woman by your side depending on how tolerant she is or if she genuinely swings that way? Or is there no discernible ontological difference between them because they are both pure forms of mindless entertainment that should be treated as such.
They are both America's pastime, that cannot be debated, and both come with a lot of cultural baggage that is best checked beforehand. Baseball isn't some pure pastoral sport and it never was, and porn isn't some perverse abomination for a minority just as it never was either. I would argue that in terms of actual significance to any viewer's life there is none – both captivate most watchers for a short period of time and then fade away, and for the few they remain vivid in the memory, to be dulled only by therapy.
There is real history: wars, plagues, political struggles, socio-economic revolutions, and then there is the history of sport. A fat man from Baltimore once hit x number of home runs 80 years ago. Another man beat that number but did it in a few extra games, hence the need for movies, books, and an asterisk next to his name like a scarlet A. Irrelevant! We go to sporting events to be entertained. That is all these people are – entertainers. To worry about whether or not they get into their own Halls of Fame is no better than worrying over who will win the Emmy for best day time actor. There are people who do worry about this to be sure, but you don't find Congress and the Senate spending millions of dollars to worry with them.
At least not when it comes to the travesty of Mickey Rourke being snubbed for that Oscar. He doesn't get so much as one million-dollar political hearing. But Rafael Palmeiro, who played for the Orioles and never helped them to the damn post-season, gets to testify about his stats in case he is able to bamboozle his way into Cooperstown, which I guarantee you is not a place you want to spend longer than an afternoon entertaining sad fantasies in line with those dreams where you thought you could one day become Superman.
Roger Clemens took steroids. Oh my god, really? I thought it was perfectly normal for a dude in his mid-40s to hurl a baseball at 95 miles an hour at another dude in his mid-40s who then freed himself of body armor long enough to dispatch it into the water hundreds of feet away. But you watched didn't you? Why? Because you could never do that, regardless of your age, and that's the lure of great sportsmen. So bring those days back, I say. Let's not discuss who is taking what to improve their game, let's focus purely on the game.
Do I care that Tom Cruise in "real life" is really only knee high to an adolescent male and may not really be into the chick that he is trying to save? He looks plenty tall and straight on the big screen, and I'm being partially entertained, by the fiction. Money well spent in my book.
Similarly, do I turn off my computer when I realize that Jenna Jameson has had work done and that Peter North looks a lot more grown up than he did in his early appearances all those years ago? I do not, in case you did not perceive that the question was purely rhetorical.
Why shouldn't sportsmen use steroids? You might counter with the argument that we stop people from riding motorcycles at dangerous speeds or others from smoking in public, so we should apply similar laws in sports. But in those other examples people breaking the law could also hurt others – the motorbike could kill many in an accident, and that second hand smoke is a utilitarian problem. But when Steve Belcher took those meds and went for a fatal jog he only hurt himself, and kudos to him for making the effort. A shout out to all those sex workers who died under the knife trying to enhance their bosoms or prettify their privates; they too will be missed in the identical way – not really, except to make this point.
Sportsmen stupid enough to use steroids aren't hurting anyone else. No one cares that the average life span of NFL players is under 60 – all those guys are literally killing themselves to entertain everyone, but the NFL remains free from health scrutiny. A cynical man would say that the NFL is much more powerful than the MLB because a lot more people watch because a lot more people bet on the NFL, but who am I to be cynical in a country where betting on sports is illegal in 90% of the states?
But hold on, don't these sportsman have a moral obligation to the children? You know those tiny tots who worship with the blind faith of radical Islam at the altar of celebrity. The same small minds that idealize film stars and musicians until those famous folk are invariably scandalized by their own humanity, and then those small minds grow to have doubts about Santa Claus, the Jonas Brothers, and if all continues in the evolutionary fashion the good Lord himself.
But sportsmen like A-Rod, B-Bonds, and Manny are not embellished religious figures like Moses, Jesus and M-Hammed. They're real flesh and bones, doing their job, which only involves getting people to pay huge sums of money to watch them hit a ball out of an enclosed space for one team and then maybe the next year for the other team, which doesn't really bother a lot of people since most of us understand that it doesn't really matter whether the Red Sox beat the Yankees only for New York to hire half the team in the off season and then beat up on Boston the following season.
The onus is not on the sportsmen to play with smaller physiques, but on adults (and that includes adult film stars, I suppose) to teach their children that a game is just a game. The real sin might lie in paying people hundreds of millions of dollars simply because they can do a physical action better than you. The hypocrisy definitely lies in tearing them to shreds when we find out that they're willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing and break the law, in order to maintain that physical ability.
So let's drop all the Puritanical bullshit that consistently holds America back from the modern age and admit that Baseball would be a lot more fun, and a lot more profitable as an entertainment business, which is the only reason it continues to exist today, if we reintroduced steroids to the game – not in an overt way, but in the same discreet way where we understand that it would be equally impolite to point out plastic surgery enhancements to a date; so rather in the way of the world where we acknowledge that this is the 21st century and the medical technology exists to make our brief lives as spectators that little bit brighter.
| 
