We Can't Build Our Dreams On Suspicious Minds

Baseball has a weird relationship with steroids. On the one hand, it's clear that association with performance enhancing drugs have a huge effort on a player's reputation. We've seen Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa go from hero to pariah. And we've seen Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez go from hated for their personality to hated for cheating.

But A-Rod is an interesting case, since he's still playing in the aftermath of steroids revelations. It seems that he is treated very differently depending on the circumstance: journalists and fans continue to treat him as persona non grata, while commentators in-game fawn over him as though nothing happened. That's especially odd when they they fawn while the audience boos. And apparently directors are on the anti-A-Rod side, since they always arrange to show fans holding up asterisk signs to put the brakes on the announcers' praise.

Further, there seems to be an undercurrent of journalists looking to forgive the steroid users. I've heard a few say that young fans and young and up-and-coming journalists don't share the anger at the cheats, and will eventually let them into the Hall of Fame. I'm not sure I buy that. I'm not sure I even buy that there are many young baseball journalists. This claim of young, forgiving journalists may be real, or it may be a subset of the media depictions of millennials. You know, the one where you not only depict them as completely different from previous generations, but also conveniently in line with what you want to happen.

On top of all this, there's the lingering doubts around many high achievers in the game. Jeff Bagwell never been implicated in cheating, yet is kept out of the Hall Of Fame in large part because of suspicion based on statistics alone. And now, accusations are being made against pitcher Jake Arrieta, based on nothing more than the fact that he's on one of the great hot streaks of all time right now.

So to summarize: some people in baseball will consider you reprehensible if you are merely successful enough that you might have used drugs. Others will forgive you even if you've been caught red-handed.