Wednesday, February 13, 2008

War on Baseball

I must admit, I'm not much of a baseball enthusiast. I played baseball for an entire summer as a child and I just didn't find the appeal.

That being said, I must say that the current fauxtreversy over "doping" in pro sports, specifically the Mitchell report on baseball has stirred up latent anger in me.

As liberal-progressive as I consider myself to be, I don't understand why we even care about regulating doping in baseball. I would guess that the vast amounts of time and money wasted on all of these investigations and hearings could have been much better utilized by useful social programs like the SCHIP expansion, school lunches, or additional Pell Grants.

Pro sports are an industry, like any other. Corruption, drug use, scandal will always be part of pro sports. The problem is that the drugs got too sophisticated to be detected and now they're supposedly out of control.

The real issue is that the government is trying once again to legislate morality.

The tragic coincidence is that pro sports and the spectator culture often lead to much more immoral behavior like binge drinking, gambling, and other unappealing activities.

Taking the corruption out of pro sports is like trying to catch smoke with a butterfly net. They'll never get any of it.

It's time for Congress to move on.

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