Injecting Talent

Joel Achenbach offers an amusing solution to the recent baseball steroid use crisis on his blog Achenblog:

Everyone knows that statistics and records are, for baseball fans, even more important than things like world peace. Now they're all in a twist because of the discovery that many of the best players are walking chemistry experiments. The new scouting report says: Throws left, bats left, injects right.

So what do we do with all the stats and records of players who were clearly cheating during the Steroid Era? There is, in fact, an obvious solution to this mess.

Any home run hit by a player on steroids simply will not count -- unless he hit it off a pitcher on steroids.

In other words, if you're a hulking, refrigerator-sized slugger who all but has "Steroid Abuser" stenciled on your uniform, your homers don't count unless you've had to hit a pitch hurled by an equally monstrous, snarling steroid freak.

Similarly, any non-drug-using runner thrown out at home plate by a steroidal outfielder will be recorded as "safe." The run counts. Also stolen bases count even if the freakazoid catcher nails the runner at the bag. Any hit by a clean player that is recorded as a "single" becomes a double if the pitcher is a moose; doubles become triples, triples become home runs, and a home run counts as a "homer-plus-a-single." Again, these bonuses only apply when the player is known to be clean, or looks like a normal, non-human-growth-hormone-injecting person, and has been forced to compete against Godzilla.