Dear Commissioner Selig:
When Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life back in 1989, I agreed with the decision. The potential harm he could have done to the game by gambling on his own team was enormous. Baseball, like law, depends to a certain extent on the integrity of the players, and those who have demonstrated they can't play by the rules should make a living doing something else.
The problem that baseball now has is that people whose bad conduct actually did -- as opposed to potentially -- hurt the game through their steroid use were not given lifetime bans. I don't have the documents in front of me, but my recollection is that the harshest suspension handed down to the substance abusers whose drug use really and truly did impact on the scores, the stats, and the game's reputation, was for fifty games.
I cannot for the life of me understand how it is fair to keep in place a lifetime ban on someone whose conduct merely could potentially have harmed the game, while giving term suspensions to players whose conduct actually did harm the game.
Please pardon Pete on your way out.