by Tom Stewart

Created on: March 14, 2009

It's a sad reality when you hear about baseball players using steroids to enhance their bodies or cork bats and tampering with baseballs to essentially cheat at their sport. But when you look at the money these players are making, the pressure must be overwhelming. Players aren't playing for the love of the sport anymore. They're professionals and this is their job. And in order to make the most money, they'll do anything they can to get ahead. Not only are they willing to cheat to make more money, they feel the pressure of having to perform at a certain level in order to justify the outrageous salaries they're earning. And in some cases it may just be an ego thing, where a player is doing anything they have to do to be the best at the sport.

Regardless of the reasons, it's still cheating, but what can we do about it? Erasing the stats of these players is a tempting idea at first, but when you think it through it makes no sense. You can't rewrite history. Sure a player may have hit more home-runs than he normally would have without cheating, but if you take away those home-runs from the record books aren't you also taking away the amount runs that team scored? That in effect changes the outcome of past games. And down the line it changes the results of win-loss records, placements in the standings, and the results of championship games. To change one player's past stats is like changing all of baseball's stats. What happened in the past happened and we're all stuck with the results.

It wouldn't be fair to the players who were playing fairly and won championships while unknowingly playing along side a cheater to just take away what they accomplished as a team. But on the other hand, it's also not fair to the legends of the game who set individual records the old-fashioned way, with hard-work and pure talent. These players should still be able to have their accomplishments recognized for being the best because they were reached fairly. Changing or not changing the stats of a proven cheater will one way or another hurt someone associated with the game.

The first solution has to be something preventative for the future. Penalities for cheating must be stricter, so players will be less likely to even consider taking drugs or using something to their advantage. The second solution has to take the sky-rocketing salaries into consideration. The more money a player can earn from simply playing a sport, the more likely he's going to be to cheat at that sport. Greed has to be taken out of the game.

But as for those who have already cheated and gotten away with it, we must do something to make examples of them. So I suggest we use an asterisks in the record books for their stats. We can't change the past, but we can at least label the cheaters in the present so that their stats are seen in a different light as those that were earned fairly. And I would actually go a step further. Any players still playing the game, like Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds, should have to wear an asterisks on their jersey, and any stat they earn should be listed with an asterisks near their name. Sort of a Scarlett Letter telling all fans that these players are proven or admitted cheaters and that their stats have tainted the game for all of us. This sort of embarrassment would surely bruise their egos and shame them for what they have done to great American sport of baseball.

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