Question of the Day: On Outrage or Indifference

Child psychologists often say violet television has a negative impact on kids and their intellectual and social growth. (Personally, I think they may be right, since I watched plenty of wrestling and action movies as a kid, and turned into a sportswriter. With more appropriate fare, I could have cured cancer or invented TiVO.) Basically, repeated exposure to blood and gor desensitizes our youth to the actual implications of actual violence. I'm wondering if a similar numbing is happening with pro sports and steroids. The news that prosecutors in New York have blown the lid off an alleged steroid/HGH racket, with implications that have reached into football and (shocker!) baseball- Gary Mathews Jr., you've got some 'splaining to do- is yet another float in the parade of drug news, following BALCO, the Carolina Panthers, and Jason Grimsley, to name a few. And while each provides an opportunity to giggle at name of ubiquitous WADA kingpin Dick Pound, they also add noise to an increasingly exhausting conversation.

Personally, while my disapproval meter is still sharp, whatever sense of outrage I had when steroids became the new black (and I think it had already been dulled by an acute awareness of the entire situation's obviousness, especially as applied to baseball) is gone. If I learned tomorrow that the Royals have been operating an HGH lab in their clubhouse for the last five seasons, my only question would be why they still sucked. My perception of sports and athletes has been altered. The specifics are less important. But I wonder about how the average fan feels. Revenues and attendance have MLB flush with cash and Sundays are still quasi-national holidays. Indignation only really matters if it shuts off the cash flow, and thus far, it seems like fans aren't voting with their wallets.

So here's my question (and a few follow ups): Where do you stand on steroids? Have the rumors that so dominate headlines made you angrier, or do you look past them now like telephone poles? How much has your love for "the game" (whatever game it may be) been diminished by drug scandals? And, most importantly, has it kept you from consuming the product?

BK