You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, and I wasn’t going to say anything till you mentioned Derek Jeter’s name in the same piece about "corruption." That’s unfair. Jeter is widely respected and considered an honest, classy player. He has never even been accused of doing anything unethical or illegal. No disrespect to your 11-year-old baseball expert, but they do not ALL take drugs or steriods.

YOu want to talk about taking drugs and steroids? Let’s talk about your favorite sport — football. You think those men look like that *naturally*? I just think that’s a little hypcritical.

Watch womens sports.  theyre not there….yet?

the competition is great without it being so over the top!!!! 

Liz, Derek Jeter’s a class act. I’m happy for him and the other true Yankees who came up through the system. But what disgusts me is the disparity in team payrolls. As I indicated in a separate post on the main blog, the Yankees dole out around $230 million annually in player salaries, give or take a penny. Smaller-market teams often cannot afford more than a $50 million payroll. Therefore, the Yankees, in particular, and large-market teams, in general, snap up the best free agents. And thus, Boston, New York and Los Angeles/Anaheim are often in the World Series.

Sure, there have been examples of small-market teams occasionally making it to the World Series (the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 come to mind). But by and large, the lack of a salary cap in baseball means the vast majority of small-market teams cannot compete year in and year out. Meanwhile, the Yankees have "won" 4 World Series since 1996.

And baseball commissioner Bud Selig looks the other way, rather than put his foot down with the players’ union and insist on a salary cap, which they have in pro basketball, hockey and football.

One thing I disagree with you about, Liz. The "crotch adjusting". If you were a man, you’d know that sometimes those cups have to be adjusted, in order to even walk, let alone play the game.

But I agree with your sentiments about the non-stop spitting, and the Great Steroid Fiasco that also, not surprisingly, occurred on Selig’s watch. Selig knew that the players were juiced up. Baseballs were flying out of stadiums at record paces, and scrawny little guys like Sammy Sosa were bulking up to the size of behemoths. Little tiny Sammy swatting 66 homers in a season?! Please.

I remember when Cecil Fielder of the Tigers whacked 50 in 1990. He was the first guy in baseball to hit 50+ since George Foster of the Reds did it in 1977. A few years later, though, everyone and their brother was doing it. Roger Maris’s record 61 homers in 1961 was crushed by clowns like Barry Bonds, Sosa and Mark McGwire.

Baseball pundits scoffed when Jose Canseco’s tell-all book came out several years ago about the steroid scandal. No one’s laughing anymore. And once baseball finally started testing these "athletes" for ‘roids, the homerun totals came back down to normal levels. Once again, it’s quite a feat to hit 50 homers in a season. And nowhere to be found are Bonds, Sosa, McGwire and the others who disgraced the game. Who can forget Rafael Palmiero swearing to a Senate panel that he did not take steroids?

"Jeter is widely respected and considered an honest, classy player. He has never even been accused of doing anything unethical or illegal."

Except tax evasion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/nyregion/16jeter.html

But I’m sure he did it in a *classy* way.