A-Rod: Can he survive among the Humans?

Hey, forget about A-Rod's steroid scandal - get a load of this questionable rubdown he's getting. The last time I saw something like this was when I walked into the wrong stall in the men's room at Penn Station.

A-Rods' steroid revelations have rocked the baseball world. Really, have they? As I have written here before, baseball is full of crap when it comes to steroids. As long as the teams are raking in the dough, they couldn't care less who is shooting 'roids. If they really cared, they would ban players who used steroids or HGH. And why can't we have the names of the 103 other players on that list of players who tested positive for illegal substances? Let's get ALL the names out, not just the high-priced Yankees. Then we'll see some fireworks. Or, allow everyone to use illegal substances by simply looking the other way and not testing anyone. And by the way, I don't buy the argument that A Rod is such a great player that he didn't need to use 'roids. He is indeed a great player, one of the greatest ever, but imagine you are him. You are facing mediocre pitchers who you know are juicing to get an edge. You just can't let that happen, no matter how much natural talent you have. Your ego won't permit it. You know other sluggers are also juicing, inflating their numbers, threatening your rightful place in baseball history. You can't allow that. So, you decide to use the same stuff everyone is using, to level the playing field. Before long, everyone is using the stuff, which is exactly what happened.

Also, lets' not kid ourselves - substance abuse and performance enhancing drugs have always been a part of American professional sports. From the 50's through the 70's, the players used amphetamines on a regular basis to stay alert. Today's football players could not grow to such immense sizes unless they were on all sorts of HGH cocktails, yet no one even questions that sport (I guess it's because baseball is such an individual sport and these larger-than -life figures really stand out and attract attention). And of course, who can forget Connie Mack's 1911 World Champion Philadelphia Athletics, who used so many of the performance enhancing drugs of that era that they were dubbed "The Laudanum Boys".... OK, I made that one up, but you get the idea.

Hey baseball, clean up your act. On second thought, don't clean up your act. Instead, give out clean needles and let the players do what they have to do to give the fans what they want. Homeruns, baby!