"The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as "steroids.""
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Gladwell’s jab isn’t really at steroids; it’s at the comfortingly tidy story we tell ourselves about them. Calling the problem “steroids” turns an ugly, systemic ecosystem into a single villain with a clear name and, conveniently, a clear solution: ban the substance, test harder, shame the cheaters. The line works because it exposes how language becomes a loophole. If the conversation stays fixed on “steroids,” MLB can posture as if it’s fighting a discrete, containable threat, instead of confronting a moving target of chemistry, incentives, and complicity.
The subtext is that enforcement fails when the problem is misdescribed. “Steroids” is a brand name for moral panic: a shorthand that lets fans, executives, and journalists keep the narrative in the familiar key of individual wrongdoing. Gladwell implies that the real challenge is broader and more slippery: performance enhancement as a category that includes HGH, masking agents, designer compounds, therapeutic-use exemptions, and the ever-expanding gray zone between training, medicine, and cheating. If you legislate yesterday’s drug, you’re always policing the rearview mirror.
Contextually, this lands in the era when baseball’s steroid scandal became a public referendum on records, nostalgia, and credibility - with media coverage often treating “steroids” as both diagnosis and explanation. Gladwell’s point is almost bureaucratic in its cynicism: you can’t crack down on what you can’t accurately name, and MLB benefits from not naming it too well.
The subtext is that enforcement fails when the problem is misdescribed. “Steroids” is a brand name for moral panic: a shorthand that lets fans, executives, and journalists keep the narrative in the familiar key of individual wrongdoing. Gladwell implies that the real challenge is broader and more slippery: performance enhancement as a category that includes HGH, masking agents, designer compounds, therapeutic-use exemptions, and the ever-expanding gray zone between training, medicine, and cheating. If you legislate yesterday’s drug, you’re always policing the rearview mirror.
Contextually, this lands in the era when baseball’s steroid scandal became a public referendum on records, nostalgia, and credibility - with media coverage often treating “steroids” as both diagnosis and explanation. Gladwell’s point is almost bureaucratic in its cynicism: you can’t crack down on what you can’t accurately name, and MLB benefits from not naming it too well.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
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