Baseball in the Spotlight

Prelude - A really big sports news story about professional baseball just emerged today. A report was released that begins to really shed light on the extent of the steroids issue in professional baseball. Will this change how fans see the game?

Sport - Baseball

Event - Investigation into the baseball's drug problem released today.

Issue
Various sports leagues have banned the use of illegal substances. Therefore, being caught using these drugs can warrant punitive action. But for fans, the actual issue has to do with the records that are broken by athletes using performance enhancing drugs. Much has been written about the all-time homerun record falling this year to a guy who is suspected of using steroids.

However, does anybody care? Fans still come to the games and upwards of 80 million North Americans will visit a ballpark in the upcoming 2008 season. For fans, it will an interesting spring has they watch and see if baseball does anything to try and keep its image clean.

Point to say - "Did you hear about the latest happening in Baseball?

Follow up point - "Do you think anything will change because of this report on stars using drugs?"

Get out of the conversation - "The Sens look to be back on track."

Backgrounder
Baseball hasn't worried about Steroids for a long time. In fact, steroids helped baseball shortly after the strike in the mid 1990's. Mark McGuire went on to break the record and America loved him for it.

Homeruns are what make the highlights. Homeruns are what give players large contracts. So nothing is about to change until the public decides it doesn't want to fund an institution that promotes or at least doesn't punish cheaters.

Baseball is handing out fines to players, but only token amounts. Very much like the NHL handouts suspensions for very dangerous hits. Nothing really significant enough to actually stop it from happening again.

Analysis
This has the potential of being really big. Or a really big puff of smoke. It all depends on how big and how far the suspensions go. But ultimately, fans must decide if this product is worthy of their money.

Links
An excellent background piece by Ken Fidlin published in the Sun chaine of newspapers.
A link to the results of the investigation as written in the Globe and Mail.