Democracy at work?
By ThrowsLikeAGirl
Somewhere along the way, the word "business" became some kind of an excuse for LOTS of bad behavior. "It's not personal. It's just business" a la Mr. Trump.
"Well, after all, Baseball IS a business," we hear - as excuses are made for ridiculous ticket prices and $5 hot dogs, "they've got to make money, too."
But here's the thing. Baseball — the MLB — is NOT a business like any other. Baseball operates under a very special antitrust excemption from the US federal government. (That's US, by the way.) The 1922 US Supreme court ruling in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that "baseball is exempt from antitrust regulations due to its peculiar nature" set the tone. Since then, Congress has circled around various interstate commerce and labor issues with Baseball, but so far hasn't changed its excemption status.
But WE (we being Congress) could if WE wanted to. And WE were about to do a little business of our own - with some voting.
And that brings us to the latest policy announcement of Steroid usage by the players and owners of the MLB. They are officially and self-righteously coming out to state that "Steroids are bad! And, furthermore, we're going to do something about it! We're cracking down!"
Well. why are steroids bad?
Are steroids bad because it's cheating? Are they bad because they can do horrible physical damage to the user? Are they bad because they distort the hard-earned records of legitimate hall-of-famers? Do they set a bad example for the nations' youth and make the achievements of all exceptional athletes suspect? — Or, ultimately, are steroids simply bad for business?
Did some of the privileged of the MLB world finally see a tipping point ahead — a point where the public would actually get so disgusted with so much cheating and doping and lying that the public would start to say "forget it, I'm taking the kids to a museum or something" ?
Now, as with most policies, it looks like this one from the MLB could have more teeth — but it's a start. The fact that a player will virtually wear a scarlet letter of "D" for doping after the FIRST failed test is a very good thing. A stint in the public stocks for being a cheater is still an ok deterent, although public scandal and humiliation isn't what it used to be.
But if the threat of congressional action is still a deterant, then we still can have some faith in the system.
And if Baseball wants to be "America's game" it should keep in mind that, after all, it IS personal.
