Start banning players under the commissioner's powers. Postseason suspensions (in addition to typical 50-game suspensions) aren't a bad place to start either for people like Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta this year.

At the very least, prohibit any player with a failed test from HoF ballots. They can't get in and their records get erased.

They discussed lifetime bans on the show. It turns out that Marvin Miller (R.I.P) was worried that if drug tests led to lifetime suspensions or voiding contracts that the temptation for owners to void huge contracts could lead to framing players.
Just think about voiding a bad contract by putting something in a cup of coffee. This week's episode of Ray Donovan showed how easy it was to do.

I would much rather have that problem than have the problem we have now.

I wonder if this conversation ever took place with drag racing "We want to see the fastest cars but only if they only use gasoline." Fuck that! Once they started "doping" with nitro and alcohol, they got faster and we loved it! Of course the new records can't be compared to the ukr ones, because through technology we found out how to make cars faster. Why can't we do the same with humans?

Of course there's a health risk, but the money they're playing for, they can decide if its worth it. I want to see faster runners and harder hitters!

The way to clean up baseball (and all sports) is to redefine "clean"

Why the hell would my phone Autocorrect anything to "ukr"?

That should have been "old"

They regulated it. If the MLB required players to take the same dosages of the same steroids over a consistent period, it would level the playing field the same as ridding the game of doping completely.

The difference is that if players like me make the MLB, well, I have seen what steroids have done to some of the best players ever. I've played with current big-leaguers and I know that

.... that they don't need steroids to be the best in the world.

Really great article on PEDs in sports and the hysteria around it
http://blogs.thescore.com/fanatico/2013/08/08/the-ped-scare-how-reinforcing-a-remnant-of-cold-war-hysteria-keeps-sports-leagues-profitable/

Your phone was obviously assembled in the Ukraine.

Ah, that's probably mostly correct. I've probably "taught" it ukr because of Ukraine in the game.

The players have decided that it's not worth it, and accordingly don't want it in their league. Keep up, champ.

Bo, you've played with current big leaguers? May I ask who?

Really extensive article Yonni.
I wonder why he didn't write about high school kids using steroids to gain an edge if they know their professional heroes are. This isn't necessarily a fair critique though because Dustin covered a tremendous amount of ground.

I've hit off of Tommy Hunter, Trey Ball (if you count him, first rounder this past year), Cory Wade, Drew Storen, Aaron Heilman, and Lance Lynn. I've played in casual games with a number of the former as well as Jarrod Parker, Jason Repko, and Dan Black (CWS minor leaguer). The common theme here is that they're all from Indiana.

I've only played Trey in an official game; the others were either in a cage or casual things during camps. I can name plenty of others I've played with/against that'll probably make the bigs barring injuries.

Steroids, unfortunately, will always be an issue in baseball, like most sports. I knew I wasn't gonna play past high school so I never even had a thought about messing with it, but there were two or three guys on the team who I'm almost sure were doing something. There's just a lot of pressure and some people will always take the short cut, even if it's a horrible decision in the long term.

Emac, steroids aren't something that underage kids should be able to get a hold of anyways but, yeah, that is a concern. I think, following his line of reasoning the, the argument would be the there are a far more reprehensible examples that athletes set for high schoolers that don't receive this amount of outrage.

Josh Lueke (rape), Delmon Young (racist assault), Yovani Gallardo (DUI), etc. etc. didn't face nearly proportional reprimand by the public, media, or MLB.

But rape, racist assault, and DUI don't pay off while Ryan Braun proves that steroids do.
Kids can hear about all sorts of scum commit crimes that don't pay off. Getting millions for a slap on the hand suspension is what they see pay off big.

Bo Sox can fill himself with every steroid known to man and it's not going to make him a major leaguer despite being a very good baseball player. I think the plea is for proportionality (and a rational vetting of illegal substances) in lieu of this hysteria.

I don't see the hysteria. A 65 game suspension for a Braun costs him $4 million of a $150 million dollar contract. This isn't hysterical when you consider the fact his use of juice is what got him the contract. Letting San Francisco benefit from Melky Cabrera's use was a hysterical response. In fact it wasn't any response against the team at all. What is "hysterical" about MLB's steroid penalties?

First off, I made the mistake too but, let's get it straight. It isn't MLB's steroid penalties. It's MLB's PED penalties. PEDs are a wide ranging category of seemingly arbitrary drugs. Cortizone shots - OK. HGH - not OK. Caffeine - OK. Ritalin - not OK. etc.

As Parkes said, several players have been sidelined with drinking too much caffeine which certainly fits all the criteria you've pointed out so far. It's harmful, it improves performance, and is marketable to high schoolers (and is actually accessibly to them!). They can see Josh Hamilton's contract and say, hey, Red Bulls helped him get that, lemme down a few before every game.

"This isn't hysterical when you consider the fact his use of juice is what got him the contract." That's a pretty unhealthy oversimplification and makes a lot of assumptions which we simply don't know. The direct effects of steroids on performance aren't well quantifiable (yet?) and, by most accounts, are seriously overblown.

An illegal bat gets 10ish games, spitballs go unpunished, and on and on.

The punishments for PEDs does fall in line with the rest of their suspensions. What makes specific 'PEDs' illegal seems arbitrary and, overall, MLB's policies seem rather poorly thought out.

The poor thought process on PED's owes quite a bit to the fact that they result from negotiations between the owners and the players union representatives. Kind of like the poor thought process in legislation negotiated between Democrats and Republicans. If the quantifiable performance effects of steroids aren't known it seems a reach to say Red Bulls got Josh Hamilton his contract.

It is a reach. And I'd say its as false as saying PEDs got Braun his contract.

"...steroids aren't something that underage kids should be able to get a hold of anyways but, yeah, that is a concern."

It's a huge concern. I could get them if I wanted them.

And no, I'm probably not making the majors, at least not out of high school. I may get drafted late if I improve a lot in college but I am getting a degree first either way. However, in my case (an average/power hitter, .400 and 10 homers a year in high school is a reasonable assumption), the kind of steroids that a Tony Bosch type would (hypothetically) give me would certainly get me into a better D1 school and maybe get some major league scouts on my tail.

To change it up, there's something we need to address here that I don't believe anyone else has brought up: the actual testing. Bud Selig and the MLB front offices laid down a 211-game suspension on A-Roid for his (aside from the Mitchell Report which they didn't want leaked and wasn't penalized) first offense because they knew he'd done it before and they knew he was adversely affecting the game. The problem with that, though, and I hope the union gets this, is that the testing is so bad that this was the first time since 2004 that he was caught despite consistently using from Bosch. Also notice that only *two* of fourteen Bosch clients so far released have tested positive (Cabrera and Yasmani Grandal); the rest of them were caught from his documents. 14% success rate is an atrocious number and if MLB is going to institute any stiffer penalties to get rid of these drugs, they need to make their tests accurate, somehow, some way.

The evidence about steroids is coming out. Comparing production after PED use with production before PED use will be crucial, as in the case of Jason Giambi for example.
The other side of the coin is when penalties increase so will the motivation to get someone dirty by slipping them a mickey so to speak.

Scientific American published a good article the effects of steroids on baseball players. http://goo.gl/P80z4J
The main benefits come from the PEDs ability to allow players to work harder in their workouts and recover faster. So an admirable quality of a strong work ethic and steroids makes a hitter stronger than without them. The second benefit was endurance. The use of steroids allowed a player to stay strong through the grind of the season. A PED user had more strength at the end of the year and didn't run out of gas like non-PED users.
The conclusion was that steroids aren't a magic bullet to make a marginal player good, but they definitely allowed a hard working, gifted athlete to maximize his strength, consistency, and endurance relative to non-PED users. Interestingly the physiologist talking about steroids used them himself.

http://www.rantsports.com/mlb/2013/08/12/los-angeles-angels-mike-trout-wants-ped-users-to-be-banned-for-life/

Emac, considering - like the study suggests - some PEDs help with conditioning and injury recovery, I think it's a pretty reasonable argument for legalization. The way that that Pettitte used HGH seems like a pretty reasonable application of the drugs.

Bo, I'm not surprised he takes that stance. It seems like any player who does something exceptional in baseball is under undue scrutiny for possible drug use. Trout is an exceptional player and, if he's following the rules, has plenty of reason to begrudge the scrutiny. Taking a strong stance like that is a good way to gain public favour.

It's impossible to consider that there is a genuine desire to see the game played by the rules?