Congress is Juiced

Thursday, I actually went out of my way to go to cspan.org to watch the hearing on steroid use in baseball. Well, Direct TV doesn't show CSPAN 3. CSPAN 3? How many of them are there? Anyway, why are you wasting time & taxpayers money on this? Don't you have something important to do like allocating 50 trillion dollars for the development of a digital toilet or something? What are you thinking? Steroids in baseball? That's all you have to worry about? Sometime after Woodstock and before Pierce Brosnan became James Bond, chemists, doctors, noted scientists or some guy, probably in Jamestown, VA. discovered steroids that could enhance strength. Not to mention 5 million other drugs that are available by prescription only, have side effects including uncontrolable flatuance & death, and are marketed like ambulance chaser attorneys on TV. Ever since time began, humans have tried to get an edge on competition. Legal or otherwise. It's human nature to want to be the best. We are trained for it from the time we are infants. That said, where is the surprize that some baseball players used steroids? Steroids have been an issue in every sport since their creation. Do we allow stuff to make players stronger, faster or whatever? Maybe, maybe not, if we have proof of it's use. Do we even have real proof the problem exists in our sport? Since it was created, cortizone has been used to stop pain in sports. Why do players get to use it? It's artificial. It stops what keep a player from playing, pain. Why don't they just have to play through the pain instead of taking a drug? If that was the case, we would have never heard of Mickey Mantle. What, you say? I can't compare cortizone to steroids? Why not? They both provide some sort of chemical & artificial means to improve or assist a players performance. An article I read on cortizone said this: "Receiving a cortisone shot is one of the quickest ways to lose strength at the ligament-bone junction (fibro-osseous junction). Cortisone and other steroid shots have the same detrimental effects on anticular cartilage healing." Wait, did I just read that cortizone is a steroid & it is harmful? Ok kids, then this means that every players stats from 1950 on should be in question and everyone from DiMaggio to Aaron is in question. That is if Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds records are in question. The whole point is that this is a witch hunt with no purpose, no proof and no real direction or conclusion in sight, other than to revoke baseball's anti-trust exemption. Congress has to stick their nose in other peoples business for no reason at all. I guess they already have the digital toilet thing wrapped up & haven't got the guts to address things like how people can sue McDonalds for selling them coffee that is 'too hot' & Big Mac's that make them fat & die of heart attacks. Can't people take responsibilitiy for their own actions? I smoke, but I don't blame the tobacco companies for making me smoke. It was my decision. Unless of course I get a piece of those billion dollar lawsuits that you got that I never saw a dime of. Therefore, Bud Selig, Donald Fehr...or any other baseball player or management type cannot be held accountable for the proliferation of steroids in the game. It takes a while to uncover hard fact truth. "My God, you didn't know Canseco was shooting up the whole west coast with steroids? You shall die a thousand deaths because we are congress & we think you should have known. You should have people staked out, hiding in lockers, mein fuherer, to follow these players constantly to see they don't break the rules...that don't exist yet! We have the power to punish you after the fact for a crime, before it was a crime!!!!!!" There's logic at work in your government, Adolph. People don't smoke a joint in a mall so everyone can see it. Addicts don't shoot heroin live on the MTV awards & players don't tell the world they are on steroids. Gaylord Perry never admitted to throwing a spitball & Sammy Sosa's bat was a batting practice corked bat for 'show'. Like he can't hit home runs off batting practice pitching anyway.....gimme a break! Oh, by the way, did you know that steroids weren't illegal during the time frame you are investigating. So, what's the point? Do you just want to discredit records for the sake of bursting bubbles. Or do you just want to find a way to punish baseball for that anti-trust thing. Like that informed idiot, Jose Canseco, and the media sweetheart that can't sign a baseball for an 8 year old kid at the winter meetings in 1992 when NO ONE else was around, (I actually saw this one occur) Barry Bonds, has stated. 'You will never get definitive proof if any broken records can be attributed to steroid use.' So I say, Why even try? IT WASN'T ILLEGAL AT THE TIME....IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!!!!!!! Baseball finally figured out the problem though and is trying to rectify it. Good for them. Leave 'em alone & see if it works. If you want to punish someone, go after big corporations that buy up mom & pop businesses, create monopolistic entities then fire all the employees to cut overhead, increase unemployment, and increase the base of consumers who can no longer afford to buy their goods or use their products. To quote the beer commercial...BRILLIANT!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! You must punish Bud Selig, Donald Fehr & baseball for not recognizing the steroid problem the day it started and begin penalties then. Ok, in that case why didn't congress forsee that this 'quick war in Iraq' looking for 'weapons of mass destruction' would cost billions of dollars more than they thought and thousands of lives...so far? Under the same 'rules' YOU should be held accountable. That is if baseball should. However, wouldn't the charges against you range from fiscal fraud to murder or at least willful endangerment of life? I guess that's not as important as making sure Mark McGuire is denied a place in the Hall Of Fame on the first ballot and that Babe Ruth's 60 home run record is 'intact'. Mind you I am all for keeping sports clean of cheating, but everyone tries to fix cheating & as soon as we find out about it & have FACTS to work with to develop a solution. Give baseball's solution a chance to work. What,you don't think the penalties are strict enough? Hell, what would you know about penalties? What did you do about Halliburton? You will never prove steroids had an effect on any baseball record and there is no reason to investigate a crime that never happened. Steroids were not illegal during that period...GIVE IT UP!!!! The exposure Canseco has given the topic has already created doubt. That is the best you can hope for. There will never be proof. Just the word of 'he said, she said'. The damage is done. Get over it & quit spending money & interupting spring training. Get back to work. Anyway, what is the big deal? Especially with home run records? Steroids don't improve eye hand reaction. The tough part about hitting a baseball is just that...HITTING it. A star still hits .300. That means they fail 7 out of 10 times to hit a baseball. Eye hand cordination can't be improved with steroids. Otherwise players would be hitting .400 all the time. Who cares how FAR the home run goes...it's still a home run. Players in this era are naturally bigger & stronger because they earn a lot of money to play. They didn't do that in the "golden era". In fact I bet Mr. Hall of Fame, Jim Bunning has never done 50 sittups...in a row. I've heard enough stories from Hall of Famers that prove they were not fit, drank all the time & never worked out, to back up my theory. Today, they workout & stay healthy from age 3. Why? Because there are million dollar contracts connected to it...hence, motivation. Keep kids off steroids? Set an example? You think stage moms are tough? Try any little league coach who is a dad who wants to live vicariously through his son. Mickey Mantle & Babe Ruth drank all the time, partied, played with with hangovers, never worked out. Ruth was a 60 home run hitting fat slob. Mantle's own quote...'If I knew I'd live this long I would've taken better care of myself.' Today's players go to the gym, workout, get stronger, play longer & hit harder. They will hit more home runs than their predecessors for that reason alone. The players of yesteryear, before free agency, had to work real jobs in the winter to make ends meet. Working out was not an option to most. They had to work at the feed store. Who cares if the home run hit was 330 feet or 2000 feet...he still hit it. We also have Spider-Man on CGI. It ain't Tobey McGuire swingin thru Manhattan, but Mark McGuire did hit 70 home runs. Just hitting the ball is a feat in itself, even on steroids. We have TV spots pushing prescription drugs that have side effects that include turning your brain into a piece of broccoli. Marijuana is not a legal medical drug for terminal patients, yet congress is worried that baseball's solution to the steroid problem isn't good enough and a full day must be spent asking 5 players mentioned in Jose Canseco's book if they took steroids. To what purpose? Get a clue guys. Quit the witch hunt and get onto something important. Like Finding Blofeld's cat. Remember, like the lottery....it's just a game!