Mark Bernstein really doesn't understand sports. At all.

I think we really need to stop obsessing with pills. We accept all sorts of other kinds of sports medicine. We accept cheating: no one ever accused Ty Cobb of playing fair, and we’re not ignoring his records. It’s a game.

Sports work because there are rules. As the decades pass, we have become better at enforcing those rules. Ty Cobb wouldn't be able to pull off today the crap he pulled off in his day. Suspected spitballers, etc wouldn't survive today's scrutiny. And that's good.

Look. Sports don't matter. Sports don't change the world. They are simply adults getting paid insane money for playing a game. We watch them for entertainment, and for the stories that we build around games and careers.

In 50 years, when baseball fans sit around debating the greatest hitters in history, some names will pop up for sure. Ruth. Gherig. Aaron. Mays. Williams. 1

Some names will come up only to be scorned. McGuire. Sosa. Bonds2. Rodriguez.

The difference is obvious. The first group laid waste to the league (as far as we know) honestly. The second group has either admitted to cheating, was caught cheating, or suspected of cheating. There is not a reasonable person alive who thinks Barry Bonds was a better player than Babe Ruth, even if the numbers say he might be.

Alex Rodriguez had the talent to be the greatest shortstop who ever played baseball, and one of the best players, period. Instead, he took a shortcut, taking drugs that gave him an edge. He cheated. He got caught. And now that's all we think of when we hear his name. And in the world of sports, that's exactly as it should be.

  1. There are lots of criteria you can use. Unless someone comes along in the next 50 years to change things, Ruth is still the right answer. ↩

  2. Sure, Bonds has never admitted using steroids. But I've been around people for a long time, and I've never seen someone gain that much muscle and have his head double in size in such a short time, at his age. The even bigger shame is that Bonds was already well on his way to becoming one of the very best hitters in baseball history before he went sideways. ↩