Steroids and Baseball

First off, I wanted to say that I am not the talented Blake Eaton but rather his accomplice, Edward McCarthy. I guess I'll be a situational writer of sorts. In lieu of the recent revelations of new steroid users, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, there are a lot of questions about both baseball's past and its even more uncertain future.
To be honest, baseball has lost me forever. Unlike Blake, who missed the ‘98 team, I moved to San Diego that year. I loved baseball so much that I would actually play games against myself. Ryan and I would play it in his cul de sac every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. during summer. It was my life.
Now, it has turned into an abomination. The seeming magic of ‘98 is lost. In light of the recent steroid scandals, how am I supposed to believe that Greg Vaughn hit 50 homers one year, and then dropped off to 45, then under 20 a year for the rest of his career? His disappearance happened almost as suddenly as the Raiders after their super bowl year. And Kevin Brown, he left after a Cy Young quality year for a hundred million dollars to the hated dodgers, where he proceeded to flop, break his hand punching a clubhouse wall (obvious signs of 'roid use) and get traded to the Evil Empire. His ERA jumped from 2.58 in 1998 to 4.81 just 4 years later. We all already know how juiced Caminiti was. If you take those 3 off the team, you are left with the 2009 Padres, a group of incompetence.
And how am I supposed to believe in the magic of that year when the amazing home run race that year between Sammy Sosa and Mark Mcgwire was definitely done on ‘roids and possibly with cork bats.
The problem with the busting of guys with the supposedly squeaky clean image is that I, and everyone else begins to question guys like Albert Pujols, Jimmy Rollins, Adrian Gonzalez, and many others - why should I believe them now? This distrust even spills over into other sports – Chauncey Billups has a career resurgence when he is 32, and past his 2004 Finals MVP prime. LeBron is the most muscular guy I've ever seen, is it because of ‘roids? What about Dwight Howard, a.k.a. Superman, I’ll never know. Everything in sports is suspicious, and it is all because of these original cheaters.
Some may say that baseball became more interesting because of the use of steroids, and that the "integrity of the game" spiel is dumb and outdated, however; what these people fail to realize is that being a spectator just isn't fun when the players aren't humans with extraordinary abilities. Instead, they are juiced up humans with ordinary abilities. The game of baseball loses its magic because of little mistakes like that. It is like watching a supercomputer solve a Sudoku puzzle, or watching the Chargers play the Raiders, or Kobayashi out eating an anorexic, or a Ferrari beating a Prius we all know what the result will be. And thus it is no longer interesting for the intricacies of the event, but the spectacle.
As far as baseball goes, I think that they need to do a couple of things in order to restore the integrity of the game.
1. Salary cap
2. Harsher penalties
3. No more asterisks
4. Invalidate the contracts of steroid positive players
5. Develop a test for HGH

Having a salary cap would do a couple of things for baseball. For example, it would lower the players, salaries, thereby reducing the incentive for players to cheat. In addition, a salary cap would force teams to develop their younger, low cost players. Thus, we would have more interesting teams like the Rays of last year. Also, the new generation of baseball players being produced would drive down the demand for old, overpaid players like Manny.
Also, 50 games for Manny and zero for a-rod are ridiculous punishments. With the increase from no suspension to 50, we saw a dramatic reduction in the number of positive steroid tests. We can assume that a season-long suspension would decrease the incentive to cheat for both the rich players and the significantly poorer minor leaguers.
While we are at it, we mine as well remove the asterisks from players such as Barry Bonds' home run records, Clemens strikeout and win qualifications. If baseball were to straight up delete their records, highly successful players would be deterred from cheating in the first place.
It is an abomination that New York owes A-Rod 275 million over the next nine years when the contract was awarded for falsified performance. What about the Dodgers owing 30 million more over the next two years, when he would get nowhere near that price on the free agent market now. It is ridiculous that teams should be punished for an individual’s mistakes.
The last demand is the most obvious, for with a reliable test to detect HGH use, we would not have to check for auxiliary, easy to cover up drugs, and instead catch the actual steroids. Which reminds me, should we really call Manny’s suspension a steroid punishment or maternity leave … I vote maternity leave.
Without these changes, I don’t think that I will ever be able to call myself a baseball fan. I, a lifetime hater of the NBA have recently turned to it during these playoffs to replace my dependence on channel 4 and the Padres, who should forever be called the Incompetents. I just hope the future record book holders like Jake Peavy and Albert Pujols aren’t caught too.