The morality of rules...

Alan Schwarz at the New York Times does an excellent piece on Baseball and steroids...

Trying to keep records pure could prove to be futile...

His interview of members of the records committee of the Society for American Baseball Research yields this very important bit of wisdom...

"Players have always broken rules, the experts said. Using steroids may also be a violation of federal law, but it was quickly noted that Babe Ruth was not exactly sober for all 637 of the home runs he hit during Prohibition.

'A record's a record," David Vincent said during the meeting. "A number doesn't have any moral value. People do.'

Very nicely put...this "scandal" should be a dead issue, by now...Congress will look to the history books like the group of sissyfoots that those who amended the Constitution to outlaw alcohol rightly do in all of our imaginations post-Prohibition...

Their problem, at the turn of the 21st century, as was the problem of teetotalers around the turn of the 20th century...is lack of perspective...on what issues are really problems...and what attempts to solve problems just complicate and compound a problem, further...

The drug war is a dead solution to an issue that needs our concern...not warfare...

The steroid scandal, from the beginning, has been all about rationalizing the failures and the counterproductiveness of the drug war...and about moralizing, under the guise of rules...

And the jig is up...

Time to move on...to a more constructive and compassionate American future:):):)...

Love,
Ben