a-rod's on roids....so what?!?

the world of sports has stopped to bring you a breaking non-story.

alex rodriguez reportedly tested positive for steroids in 2003.

every news organization leading with this story will give any number of reasons that this is earth shattering information.

1. a-rod is baseball's biggest star playing on the biggest stage for the game's biggest team.
   
2. a-rod has led us to believe that he was clean.
3. a-rod is after the most hallowed record in american sports.
   
4. a-rod was going to deliver baseball from evil.
5. a-rod is the guy that people love to hate.

so now that we believe that a-rod really is a-fraud, where's the story? before we light our torches and grab our pitchforks to storm count bud selig's castle, what exactly are we mad about? yes, there's a new poster boy for the scourge of performance enhancing drugs that will eventually enslave our children. but beyond that, what did we learn that we didn't know already?

1. baseball players in 2003 tested positive for steroids.
2. baseball players lied about using steroids.
3. baseball personnel looked the other way when it came to steroid use.

it was no secret that baseball tested players in 2003. it was equally public that if five percent or more tested positive that testing would be made mandatory the following year. guess what, folks? testing would be made mandatory the following year.

the only argument about this story that has any shred of weight is why there are 103 other names that haven't been revealed. but even if we learned their names, what does that solve?

in what we now call the Steroid Era, finding out who took performance enhancing drugs is a little like finding out which actor or musician is gay - except in baseball you don't get a softly lit photo spread in people magazine.

if there's a silver lining, it's that we no longer have a witch hunt on our hands. the majority of the accusations have some basis of fact. but this finger pointing stage we've entered is no more productive than the verbal boiling in oil that so many participated in previously.

if everyone in and around the game is truly interested in cleaning it up (and i believe they are), then talking about who did it serves no purpose. the league has taken a big step by adding serious punishments that appear to have had an effect. the next step is to find a way to keep up with the cheaters. if not to stay in step with their methods, at least to be close enough on their heels that cheating doesn't seem worth the effort.

take a tip from vegas. bring some of the cheaters over to your side. learn from them. study their methods. that may mean a little extra money comes out of the owners coffers every year to pay for r&d. but if the players are going to be punished for their actions, management deserves some consequence for their complicity.

the game is good. always has been. it's survived game fixing scandals and labor strife. flourished in wartime. stood a model for social change. this is merely a brushback pitch.