Today, baseball announced a new, stricter steroid policy. Now, a player gets a 50 game suspension on the first offense, a 100 game suspension on the second offense, and is banned for life on a third offense. At first I thought the new policy was too harsh on first-time offenders but the more I thought about it, it is only 1/3 of a season, which would be like 5 games in the NFL or 27 games in the NBA .
However, the new agreement covers more than steroids. For the first time, Major League Baseball will test for amphetamines, which many players feel is a much bigger problem than steroids. With the new testing, we should find out rather quickly if that is the case or not.
Still, I wonder if baseball, and even sports in general, is fighting a losing battle against steroids. Better masking agents are being developed, as well as different steroids. Some people think the technology to infuse/mutate DNA to make a perfect athlete out of anybody is in the not so distant future too, and that would be impossible to detect. I hope that never happens, but it is possible.
For now, baseball can claim victory on the battle at hand. However, can they claim victory on the war against performance enhancement? Only time will tell.
It's good to see baseball finally doing something about the drug problem. However, someone will always find a way around the rules, no matter how strict the policy is agaings performance enhancing drugs.
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