Last year, for the first time in my life, I experienced a summer without baseball.
No, it wasn’t due to a strike or because I was overseas backpacking through the Alps; it was simply that I was tired of hearing the names of so many of my favorite players besmirched for using performance-enhancing drugs.
So I decided to wage a personal strike against Major League Baseball.
Since I can first remember, I adored, loved and cherished every new baseball season. In December, when everyone else was talking about football, I was watching to see where my favorite free agents would end up, always hoping that the Astros would sign a great player.
My love for the game is so strong that it doesn’t just affect me; it affects my family members as well.
When I was on my honeymoon, my wife and I were in New York and we spent a day in the old Yankee Stadium. I got a chance to take in a piece of baseball history, and it was one of the most exciting days of my life.
This year, I have given up my strike and am looking forward to the 2010 baseball season, especially since the league decided to make some adjustments to the way players are tested for PEDs. The New York Times published an article Tuesday in which reporter Michael Schmidt wrote that MLB would start blood testing some of its minor league players for doping later in 2010.
Such testing is a huge victory for die-hard baseball fans.
Once this testing has been proven to be accurate, it should be only a matter of time before it trickles up into the major leagues, which will hopefully lead to MLB having an undeniably clean game.
Schmidt also reported that the decision to drug test minor league athletes was made following the suspension of a British rugby player who tested positive for human growth hormone.
“It was the first time that an athlete had been publicly identified for testing positive for the substance and was seen as overdue proof that the blood test, which has been in limited use for six years, actually works,” Schmidt wrote.
Giving a hard line for players in the minor leagues to keep to may not stop cheating at the professional level, but it should send a message to all major league players that PED testing for them may not be very far away.
Players can complain that the tests being given are unreliable, and to some extent, they may be. It is only a matter of time, however, until science produces a foolproof way to catch cheaters.
I can still hear both of my parents telling me when I was young that cheaters never prosper. Unfortunately, that might not be true today.
But that being said, MLB is taking the initiative to finally help rid itself of cheaters.
Now the only question is, will casual fans enjoy what is sure to be a more “boring” style of baseball?
Harold Arnold is a business senior and may be contacted at [email protected]
