Anyone in baseball who wants to know what happens to a sport that fails to clean itself up should have a look at professional cycling in Europe. When I first came over here cycling was a big sport. The Tour de France used to get live daily coverage in Britain and Ireland. Sean Kelly was probably the most famous Irish athlete at the time.
However, cycling was riddled with drugs use and it all came to a head in 1998 when a team car was caught with all sorts of performance enhancing substances in it, but the damage had started long before that. Little by little before that seminal event drugs had corrupted the sport. Today, many people are skeptical of everything that goes on in cycling and interest is not what it was (in Britain & Ireland anyway). Although few in the US seem to doubt that Lance Armstrong has accomplished is anything short of a great story, I think there are very few on this side who really believe. This has nothing to do with his being American and everything to do with the nature of the sport and the damage it did to itself.
This is what baseball can look forward to if the union and owners don't make a concerted effort to rid the game of steroids and other drugs now.
