Steroids and Hockey

We're always looking for trouble when these two subject come up. Sports is a unique arena. The current steroid controversy in baseball has overshadowed many other noteworthy stories this spring. This should come as no surprise, though. Baseball players for years have been trying to get ahead of the competition by cheating.

Since baseball became a professional sport, people have used corked bats, cut balls, sharpened spikes, barred minorities from playing, and used performance enhancing drugs to get ahead. This latest surge of controversy is nothing if not late. This should have come up years ago.

Furthermore, the players, at this point, have no right to criticize the current rules implemented for steroid testing. Yes, they are pointless. No suspensions until the third positive test, and no serious penalties until the fifth positive test is a joke. The players dug their own grave. It was the Major League Baseball Players Association that pushed for the inadequate penalties in the first place. If the players had wanted more stringent testing procedures and penalties, they should have relayed that to their union representative.

Oh, yeah, and Barry, quit trying to deny it.

Now my second topic is the recent cheap shot taken by a NHL player. Todd Bertuzzi did a dumb thing. Hockey and baseball players for a long time have been playing the game of trying to be players and referees. This will not work. Yes, Steve Moore did give a Markus Naslund a cheap shot earlier in the season, but that should have never lead to him getting a broken neck.

The NHL needs to put a stop to these kind of shenanigans. Hockey is considered, by many, to not be one of the four big sports that it tries to be. Yes fighting is a part of the game that seems to get fans the most excited, but there has to be a better way. International Hockey does not allow fighting, and it manages to keep us intrigued every four years. Situations will happen like in the last Olympics when a cheap shot was given merely because they knew that there were no enforcers to clean up the mess.

In an 84 game season, things can be remedied without the use of an enforcer. Players can be thrown out of games, fined, and suspended. Too many times, hockey games become brawls and not games. These people are fine athletes. They should be able to play a game without having to worry about ending up with a concussion and a broken neck because someone holds a grudge.