s a lot of problems ... but don't bother the fans with the business stuff."1
             Yet those involved in the sport seem to have tried unrelentingly to sap the fun out of the game in recent years by accentuating its business aspects. Through work stoppages, contract disputes, and boorish behavior, baseball's powerful leaders have managed to take our national pastime and drag it through the mud. Baseball has gone from being a kid's game, one played on sandlots and backyards, into being a cold, heartless business played out in board rooms and courthouses.
             Baseball has become a business. The roots of this unwanted transformation all trace back to those men who made it the nearly holy sport it was years ago: the players.
             Part of the tarnishing of baseball's image by the players has happened through their on and off the field conduct. Taking advantage of their status as cultural icons, they have committed countless transgressions with no fear of reprimand. They are able to indulge in this type of behavior because the sport has proven over time that, as long as they can hit a curve ball or strike out the side with their fastball, there will always be a place in the game for them.
             In the early 1980s these unethical actions were most commonly seen in the form of drug use. The problem first arose when four Kansas City players and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Steve Howe were suspended for using drugs in 1983. Yet the nation was shocked when, during a drug trial in Pittsburgh in September 1985, St Louis Cardinals first baseman Keith Hernandez claimed that 40 percent of players in the league were cocaine users. His accusations were not only not disproved, but substantiated when Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog admitted ten or eleven members of his team were cocaine users.
             This revelation was met by the overwhelming disapproval of fans. In a 1986 poll 86 percent of those responding said they believed athletes used dr...