The Dooryard

The cheaters must pay

Major League Baseball is flexing some muscle now about illegal steroid use amongst players. Commissioner Bud Selig is calling for much stiffer penalties (including league expulsion for a third offense) and MLB nailed its first semi-big steroid user, Twins relief pitcher Juan Rincon. It's good to see that pressure from Congress has pushed baseball to create serious penalties for illegal steroid usage.

I'd go a step further: first offense = one-season suspension; second offense = permanent expulsion. But, my tolerance for drug use - and especially drugs used to cheat, which have absolutely no merit or positive usage in today's sports - is virtually zero.

There's a great discussion happening now at Outsports about my column on inappropriate public sex.

Yes, ecstasy is linked to long-term memory loss. I love the people who keep saying it's not bad for you, despite all the shit that keeps coming out about it. I guess we all believe what we want to believe.

A&E is developing a movie about gays going on strike to protest their lack of marriage rights. I've always wondered what would  happen if gays simply refused to go to weddings, bake wedding cakes, design wedding dresses or do flowers for weddings. Now that's a strike I'd love to try!

Conte comes clean

ABC's 20/20 special, aired Friday night, including a long interview with Victor Conte, founder and president of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), was eye-opening. Conte claims to have helped many professional and world-class athletes use performance-enhancing drugs while still passing drug tests.

Conte claimed that 50 percent of MLB players are taking steroids. He said 80 percent of them are taking performance-enhancing supplements before games. He said the Olympic Games are a fraud. He said some of public's heroes in numerous sports have been performing juiced up.

Ban the bums - forever

More than anything else, cheating undermines sports. It's why pro athletes can get away with beating their wives and get nailed for gambling on their own games.

BALCO is under investigation for producing and distributing illegal performance-enhancing drugs. That sucks, but my biggest beef isn't with them. It's with the guys like New York Yankee Jason Giambi and San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds who used these drugs to give them an illegal edge over their competitors.

Bonds is saying he didn't know that the substances his trainer was giving him were steroids. I'm sorry, not even a pro baseball player is dumb enough to not suspect anything when his trainer tells him to "take this stuff, just don't ask me what it is."