Steroids And Baseball: Friends Forever

NEW YORK (TNA) -- For almost a year, the sports world has been salivating over the release of the Mitchell Report. Within the report is a list of Major League Baseball players linked to steroid use.

What will this report do to change the way Major League Baseball handles steroids? Absolutely nothing.

Professional baseball is a competitive sport played by competitive athletes making millions of dollars. With no current salary cap in baseball, there is little limit as to how much a player can make.

How can we blame competitive people for doing what it takes to get ahead? That's not to say drug use is acceptable, but it's easy to see why it has become a more common practice.

As long as athletes are paid based on performance, there will be drug use. For every drug that is put on the banned list, there is another one waiting in a lab to be introduced. It is a problem that will never go away. As long as players like Alex Rodriguez can make $275 million for being great, there will be players taking steroids to keep up.

You want to get rid of illegal drug use in baseball? Put a salary cap on each player. If players were not able to make more than $1 million per season regardless of performance, there wouldn't be such a drive to get an edge.

Would the league lose a lot of players? Yes. What else would it lose? Greedy agents, dishonest trainers, and money-hungry free agents.

And as for the additional profit to the teams that salary cap would bring? Force teams to pass it on to the fans. Require teams to cut ticket prices to make games more accessible to the average fan. Lower the price of concessions to an appropriate level instead of the inflated cost they’re at now.

Additional money can be allocated for player health care, retirement funds, disability and so on. Each team can set up academic scholarship funds for underprivileged youth players.

Is that a drastic measure? Of course. Will this ever happen? Of course not. As long as there is money to be made by players and executives, there will be steroids or equivalent drugs.

Good players make more money, draw bigger crowds, and sell more merchandise. The people who run baseball don't care about who takes steroids. They only care about who gets caught.