Brent Musburger, in my opinion, is at a point in his career where he probably has more latitude to express his candor on certain things that the rest of the traditional sports media may not.

“I’ve had somebody say that, you know, steroids should be banned because they’re not healthy for you,” he told the students Tuesday. “Let’s go find out. What do the doctors actually think about anabolic steroids and the use by athletes? Don’t have a preconceived notion that this is right or this is wrong.”

Musburger said negative stories about steroids are mainly the fault of “journalism youngsters out there covering sports (who) got too deeply involved in something they didn’t know too much about.” –The AP.

PREACH. ON. Look, I’m not saying steroids are great, or even ethical, but the stigma that steroids have in the sporting world and in the media today is just insane. Steroids have been used as a conduit, in my opinion, for certain sportswriters to carry out whatever agendae they choose against whomever they choose. Barry Bonds. Brian Cushing. Marion Jones. Whoever. I don’t really care about steroids in big sports, just as long as somebody finally nails Lance Armstrong. The only thing worse than hearing about steroids is hearing about cycling…

One of the most ignorant and irritating aspects of the steroid discussion engulfing baseball is the presumption of innocence that still exists with regard to certain players. How a person that knows anything about baseball could say,”This player did steroids and cheated; and my favorite player would never do that.” This idiocy was exposed to some degree last week when Ortiz and Ramirez were both revealed to have tested positive in MLB’s 2003 PED audit. And yet that attitude still seems to exist, as presented in a reader submission to GameOn, posted yesterday (emphasis added):

If a player is injured, or is just a contact hitter, then that player does not receive the love that the power guys do. Take Ken Griffey Jr., for example. He has had a great career but during the years that he was injured, he was largely dismissed by fans. Griffey did not take steroids to get back into the lineup like he could have. Instead, he let his body heal naturally. via.

There are two types of players in baseball right now: those that have reportedly tested positive, and those that haven’t. There is no “clean” or “dirty,” because nobody knows who’s “clean.” There’s no point in outing anyone as a “cheater” if we don’t know who didn’t “cheat.” How can you chastise those that failed when (a) there’s still the equivalent of more than three entire teams’ worth of players that failed the 2003 test, and (b) you have absolutely no idea who those players are?

This whole witch hunt is the only thing keeping baseball in the national consciousness. It’s time to pull the plug.

The worst thing about all this failed PED test business is that ESPN becomes even less watchable than usual. “SportsCenter” and “First Take” are in the veritable sports news kitchen, baking up their usual recipes of speculation and conjecture, which is kinda redundant for us since I wrote about this yesterday, you read about it yesterday, and it just feels like the monolith is a day behind on this.

And the big angle that ESPN is taking deals with Ortiz’s denial and subsequent tough talk with regard to his thoughts on punishing players that test positive for PEDs. But what else would he do? If he’s on them, he’ll talk the talk and act like he’s not, like his one of the guys whose legacy was besmirched by this whole thing. If he’s not (and since nobody knows for what the players were being tested in 2003), he would have spoken out in much the same way.

By the way, today is baseball’s trade deadline, though it doesn’t seem that Blue Jays pitcher will be leaving Toronto (the Jays are asking for too much). Hey, I know! Let’s talk about steroids some more! Or beat in the side of my skull with an aluminum bat. I can’t tell the difference. Don’t forget to turn that right hand over.

People are clamoring for the list of the 104 Major League players that tested positive for steroids in 2003 to be made public, but it will never happen. Because the “lawyers with knowledge of the results” are surely getting his rocks off by leaking these names in such a piecemeal manner, as they’ve now done by leaking David Ortiz’s and former Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez’s test results from 2003.

Never mind the fact that the list was simply an audit to determine whether or not MLB would implement any legitimate testing, and not an actual test itself. Never mind that the list was sealed before being seized by federal regulators. Never mind that there are still 97 players on that 2003 list that are still anonymous, giving armchair pundits plenty of pasture to speculate about “who was dirty.”

We don’t know who was on what, or when, which makes these “revelations” completely worthless. Is Big Papi’s legacy in question now? It depends; do you assume that every pitcher he faced in 2003 was clean? Do you assume that only a select few of Ortiz’s rival hitters were illegally medicated? It doesn’t seem to matter now, because “lawyers with knowledge of the results” decided to point the invisible finger at Ortiz, and outlets like the New York Times and ESPN are going to suck that finger until milk comes out of it.

This whole thing is just out of hand. You can’t stick the syringe back in baseball’s ass and suck all the PEDs out of the game, and yet that’s what everyone covering the game is trying to do, and will continue to do, even as these guys become eligible for the hall. How can you point a finger and ostracize one guy when, as far as anyone knows, everyone sharing the field with him could be doing the exact same thing?