The Freedom to be Stupid

ALEX RODRIGUIZ said the other day that we can all agree that performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are bad, and that we must get rid of them. This, from a person who seems to have a habit of using them quite regularly. Maybe he's changed his mind just recently... Alex further said that he has done no wrong, and that eventually his side of the story would be told. The thought crosses one's mind that right now might be as good a time as any to tell the tale, especially if it vindicates him, as he says it does. The billionaire owners of professional baseball, who for decades were perfectly willing to ingore steroid use while players turned into super human machines who performed great feats on the field and only started opposing steroid use when it became obvious the true consequences of it, now righteously pursue and prosecute offenders. One former major league player, a bit of a charactger, suggested recently that baseball was much more esciting during the steroid era, by which he means the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and he has some evidence to back it up. Everybody seems to have forgotten one small fact; the fact, in the face of all the steroid hatred, that america is supposedly tha land of freedom. You can make the same argument about steroid use as you can about abortion; adults should have the freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies, for good or ill. Freedom includes the freedom to be stupid.