SICK AND TIRED OF STEROIDS

He's left Deadspin, but Will Leitch still surfaces on occasion.

The latest sighting of the "former blogger" and one-time target for Buzz Bissinger came Friday morning, when he penned a piece for Sporting News Today.

(By the way, if you don't get Sporting News Today sent to your mailbox every morning, you're missing out. At least 30 pages of comprehensive sports coverage, including all the late-night scores you missed because your alarm goes off at 3am or 4am every morning. Wait, that's just me.)

Leitch absolutely nailed the Ramirez story. It's on page five of the 40-page Friday issue.

Seriously, it’s time to let it go. I’m tired of it, we’re all tired of it. We’ll never really know what happened during the “Steroid Era,” who was using, who wasn’t. Some of you—most of you will be media members—will be driven mad by this fact. Most of you will not. Most of you will recognize that baseball is a sport. It’s entertainment. It’s something that can move us, touch our hearts, inspire us, connect generations. But it’s still just a bunch of guys wearing funny outfits swinging a stick and running around a square.

One of the fun things about a story like Manny Ramirez is that people who don't like sports are talking about it. Of course, they end up asking questions like "Who else in baseball is using?" and "Are you surprised?".

I almost think people are put off when I tell them that I'm not surprised.

But I'm not.

I'd like to fake some outrage at a guy like Manny. He's got all the talent in the world, a God-given ability to smack a baseball that most of us can only marvel at. He needs to take steroids/PEDs like I need to eat a half-pound burger. Same goes for most major-league players. On the list of stuff they should be consuming to keep their bodies in optimum condition, "steroids" should rest at the bottom, right behind Ho-Hos, Big Texas Cinnamon Rolls, and fried lard.

Instead, I'm just inclined to stick him in the long line of cheaters and move on with my life. Frankly, I'm more concerned about a hockey player sneaking brass knuckles into a fight against a bigger guy. That's the kind of cheating that actually affects my ability to enjoy a competition.

I'm beyond the point of watching sporting events and wondering if the athletes are juicing.

It's not that it shouldn't matter. I don't want my son choosing to play a sport and then finding out that he has to stick a needle in his ass to keep up with everyone else who is. It absolutely matters that we stop it.

But I can't do anything about it. As Leitch says at the end of his column, the only thing that can stop us from enjoying baseball is us. Same is true of any other sport. It might not be for everyone, but I just don't care about this anymore.

We all had a hand in turning our awesome sports into big businesses. We can't turn away when the participants act accordingly.