But there needs to be an acknowledgement of what Bonds carries. He carries an entire era of baseball, the pretesting era, pretty much alone these days - and there needs to be a serious discussion of what that means.
Specifically, if you are violating a rule that is not being enforced - not by
neglect but by a conscious decision made by the people who devised the rule - what exactly have you done wrong?
And, if that unenforced rule is being violated by hundreds of your fellow citizens - and hundreds is a kind guess of how many baseball players were in violation of the rules against performance-enhancers, hundreds in a very small community - you have to ask the same question:
What exactly have you done wrong?
"Legally no crime," said Arthur Caplan, the ethicist from Penn. "But ethically still a problem."
Caplan and I traded e-mails the other day. A while back, we were on a panel together at the Franklin Institute about steroids in sports, arranged by Comcast SportsNet.
That the use of performance-enhancing drugs is wrong goes without saying. That preventing young people from getting
involved with these substances should be the No. 1 aim of this entire discussion also should be understood by everyone. There is a health risk to kids, and it should be
addressed with vigor and with money.
But the rest of it is all kind of make-believe. The money in professional sports breeds different behavior. Elite athletes making millions of dollars take painkilling injections to keep playing that no physician would ever prescribe for you or me - because we are not elite athletes making millions of dollars.
That is only one small example. Elite athletes have always cheated, or at least pushed the ethical envelope in search of an advantage. All of the testing protocols in the world will not catch a persistent, well-educated, well-funded cheater. That is just real life.
