Not my kind of game anymore

As I sit here in the press box at Legion Field watching Florence-Darlington Tech’s doubleheader with Hudson Valley, a sickening feeling hits me.
I have become the skeptical, if not apathetic, baseball fan. The BALCO investigation, the Mitchell Report and the A-Rod scandal have soured me on the sport in a way the strike never could
Most of the numbers garnered during the “Steroid Era” were tainted. All of Barry Bonds’ numbers after 1998 are garbage. As are Roger Clemens’ numbers after he left Boston.
What about A-Rod? He says he stopped using performance enhancers after 2005, but he’s been linked to his cousin, Yuri Sucart , and a trainer now banned by Major League Baseball for his links to PEDs as late as 2007.
Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hailed as heroes in 1998 for resurrecting the sport after the strike with their epic home run chase of Roger Maris. Now we know it was all a fraud as colossal as their muscles and the pair have become pariahs. McGwire will never see the Hall of Fame, and Sosa can’t buy a major-league job. His fate will likely be the same: no trip to Cooperstown.
If you ask my editor and co-workers, Bonds and Clemens will get inducted. How?
We’re they both Hall of Famers before steroids? Yes. Are they now? Absolutely not.
How can you reward them for bad behavior? The Baseball Hall of Fame is not AIG. They shouldn’t hand out the highest honor in the sport to men who cheated the sport.
My co-workers’ rationale about McGwire not getting in is his low career batting average and RBI total. Okay. He still hit 583 homers!
Take away the song and dance in front of Congress, and he gets to deliver an induction speech. That argument is inane at best.
Either they all deserve to get in, or none of them deserve to get in. You don’t decide to induct one cheater and leave another out. None of the alleged steroid users will get, despite what my co-workers say.
Until then, I will watch baseball with a sense of loss and anger. A beautiful sport has been forever tarnished, and I don’t think it will ever come back.

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