A-Rod, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens … and the list goes on and on. Every stinking year I try and find someone in Major League Baseball to look up to, and every year most of them are on more stuff that Joaquin Phoenix seems like he’s taking. The worst part about the whole steroid thing, besides the fact that it hangs around like a particularly bad burst of flatulence, is that once the players have been caught, they play dumb. These jugheads insult the intelligence of the American people by using excuses such as, “I didn’t know they were steroids” — or my personal favorite from Floyd Landis, claiming his unnatural testosterone levels after his Tour De France victory were in fact natural.

Apparently he is just that much of a man.

Steroid use is quite dumb at any level of sports, and is very dangerous for the athlete.

The athlete knows that. Everyone does. So I say, if the athletes want to ‘roid up and go play some ball, let them. It’ll be more enjoyable for the fans. The only reason people watch baseball anymore is for the home runs, so why not give us what we want? A bunch of disproportionate and overpaid superstars swinging what now looks like a toothpick, and just blasting a baseball literally out of the park. That may sound crazy, but what the MLB and the other professional sports are doing now is just as ridiculous. Currently in the MLB, if you are caught using a banned substance, you get a small slap on the wrist and suspended for a few games. Being suspended for a few games when you play at least 162 in a season isn’t really a punishment — it’s a vacation.

If MLB wants to be taken seriously, they need to institute a zero-tolerance policy on this stuff: get caught on the juice, get thrown out of baseball forever. The solution is just that simple. Major League Baseball has taken steps like this in the past. Pete Rose was caught betting on the game of baseball, which could be considered a form of cheating. A-Rod was caught giving himself a competitive advantage over other players, which is a form of cheating.

Pete Rose was banned from baseball forever. A-Rod had a few questions to answer, in which he just came across looking stupid because he couldn’t seem to remember anything at all. Is there a double standard going on here or what?

Players in general don’t view steroid abuse as a serious issue because they know that if they get caught, they can apologize, change teams and start playing again. If the sports industry wants to eliminate steroids, take that security away from the players so they know that we don’t want this stuff in our athletes.

A lot of the time the commissioners and owners claim that it’s hard to test players and catch them because of all the new stuff that comes out. Well, that is a lame excuse and shows weakness once again. What the owners are claiming is that these million-dollar players don’t know what goes in them.

Come on — you don’t just wake up one morning and suddenly get injected with human growth hormones without noticing it.

If they really cared about getting this stuff out of their respective sports, they would man up and set some truly tough standards and guidelines for substances. If baseball and endorsements are how you pay the bills, you won’t risk losing everything on getting slightly better stats. If players are still dumb enough to risk it, then they will sleep in the bed that they made. No exceptions. Not even for A-Rod.

Until the players see that the owners and people who run the MLB are really serious about steroids, they will continue to juice up and not really care. Until then, I say, if they want to ruin their hearts and bodies for 10 more home runs, let them. Just more highlights for me to watch during SportsCenter.

— Justan Spaid is a sophomore in history from McCallsburg.