All rules have an origin of some kind or another. the anti-steroid rule is the consensus of the powers-that-be in baseball that use of this category of drugs alters the human body -- often in ultimately and even interimly deleterious ways -- such that the player himself, the very self, is not anymore the one responsible for the advances but the drugs themselves are disproportionately responsible. This leads, I suppose, to a deep pseudo-philosophic discussion of what exactly the "self" really is, and, more to the point for this present discussion, the limits that can legitimately be placed on its enhancement. Well, we can rest easy and assured that the "powers that be," in all the wisdom they might muster and the responsibility they might steward, have come to a definite, though interim, by the nature of things, conclusion, that -- hey -- based on what we know now, this is going too far for the would-be superman and the future raisin-ball. And it is their prerogative, duly arrived at. Do we need a rash of spectacles like that wrestler and his family? Show a little sophistication. Carrying a philosophy too far almost invariably leads to an absurdity, as here.
