A-Rod tainted by players union's mistake; how will he respond?

[Imran Siddiqui]

People's naivete, or their looking the way, caused this to happen in the first place (if we really actually care that players are juicing and itsn't manufactured outrage - which I'm not convinced isn't the case). The fanbase turned a blind eye as long as balls were leaving the park in record numbers.

All I really have to do is look at the NFL to see that the fans don't really care about juicing players. They like being told a story that everyone is tested and once in a while a few players get suspended for it.

edit: to add, the strike of 1994 hurt revenues badly for which it took over half a decade for baseball to recover, but every year since the major steroid revelations have come out, baseball has continued to set revenue and attendance records, and its only been accelerating (well, probably until this year as the economy has its bottom fallen out).

[-Jrabbit]

People's naivete, or their looking the way, caused this to happen in the first place

Blaming the public for players juicing?

You're just pathetic.

[snoopy369]

I don't see it that way, JR. I think Imran is blaming the public for the scandal erupting in such a way, for ignoring an obvious problem for years, ostrich-style. Certainly the players are at fault for the actual act; but you are forgetting that Imran doesn't really care about that actual act. Thus problem from his point of view is the air of scandal people place on this, as if it were a shock, when it shouldn't be shocking in the least.

[-Jrabbit]

I'm not shocked, nor is anyone I know. I don't think any normally perceptive person is. But it's not like the public ever had the ability to extract the truth from all the liars and deniers. The air of scandal comes from the media much more than public at large. The fact that people attended games in '98 -- LONG after juicing started -- is beside the point. History was being made. It was a story. Again, driven by the meda. Blame the owners, union and league for being greedy if you like. But blaming the public as enablers is insulting, disingenuous and irrelevant.

Look at my original post (#17). All I'm saying is:

MLB should just call it the Steroids Era, adopt a hard-line stance (constant and state of the art testing, brutal penalties) going forward, and focus on the future.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I don't see it that way, JR. I think Imran is blaming the public for the scandal erupting in such a way, for ignoring an obvious problem for years, ostrich-style. Certainly the players are at fault for the actual act; but you are forgetting that Imran doesn't really care about that actual act. Thus problem from his point of view is the air of scandal people place on this, as if it were a shock, when it shouldn't be shocking in the least.

And, really, the public doesn't give a damn in actual terms. Attendance and revenues have broken records every single year since the first steroid allegations were verified. 2008 was another record season for baseball.

[-Jrabbit]

Look, Imran, we basically agree on the poll. The athletes are not victims here.

But blaming the public as enablers is insulting, disingenuous and irrelevant.

[SlowwHand]

You want to talk tragedy? Let's talk about Roger Maris again and the anguish he dealt with until he died, bcause of a non-extistent asterisk over a few extra games. That poor bastard.

[snoopy369]

Look, Imran, we basically agree on the poll. The athletes are not victims here.

Where did Imran blame the public as enablers? He blamed the public for creating the SCANDAL, but not for the actual steroid usage. That's not enabling, that's creating a false scandal, which is give-or-take what happened ...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Perhaps in a somewhat tangential way, you can say they are enabling steroid usage because they keep paying for tickets and those with better HR number get more money, which is based off of some percentage of revenue the team has, but that's a stretching it.

[rah]

We will never know what the would have happened without the roids. Maybe the annual increases in attendance and revenues would have been even greater. So you can't say that because of the increases that the ROIDS haven't had any impact.

[-Jrabbit]

The scandal is real. Whether covered by the rules of the game or not, these substances are illegal. I would maintain that, if you're going to try to deflect the blame outside the game at least assign it where it rightly belongs -- with the media.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The scandal is manufactured outrage. If people really cared, they would stop watching the game. They haven't.

A-Rod using in 2003 will have roughly the same impact as the "scandal" with him dating Madonna. All that's gonna happen is he's going to get booed a little more around the league and that's it.

--

Btw, am I the only one would would LOVE it if one of the 103 not named so far on the list was Jeter?

[Imran Siddiqui]

We will never know what the would have happened without the roids. Maybe the annual increases in attendance and revenues would have been even greater. So you can't say that because of the increases that the ROIDS haven't had any impact.

Seems obvious to me that the steroid scandal has had absolutely no impact. The growth in the game has been astronomical since the news broke. I think that the onus is on those who claim that steroids has hurt the game (otherwise, who really cares?). As there seems to be absolutely no proof it has done so.

Btw, this is from back in 2007:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/25/commentary/sportsbiz/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- When it comes to sales, the National Football League used to dwarf Major League Baseball the way a defensive lineman towers over a batboy.

Not any longer. Baseball will finish this year with just over $6 billion in revenue, according to Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's president and chief operating officer.

To put that into context, that puts baseball right on the heels of the more than $6 billion in revenue reported by the National Football League in 2006.

Yes, baseball has a lot more games from which to generate sales than the NFL, but that has always been the case. Simply put, baseball has done a much better job in the past few years of boosting its revenue beyond traditional sources, i.e. ticket sales and television broadcasting.

Baseball's sales have increased 50 percent from 2004 and have doubled since 2000. The NFL's sales grew at roughly half of baseball's pace during the same time period.

[-Jrabbit]

The scandal is manufactured outrage. :

And the manufacturer is the media. Most emphatically not the public at large.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Who exactly do you think the media is playing to? You can try to blame the National Enquirer for sensationalism, but someone is buying their magazines, no?