There are very few certainties in life, but some things we can count on. We can count on death. We can count on taxes. We can count on Keith Hernandez sporting an amazing mustache. And if we watch any televised baseball game, we can count on seeing a bunch of aggrieved (and annoying) Joe Buck-ish broadcasters whining about steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) ruining the sport, followed by a steady diet of ED commercials showing twin bathtubs and footballs going through tires.

I don’t blame Major League Baseball for embracing the advertising dollars of Viagra and Cialis and Levitra. There’s a market for aging baseball fans who need a little pharmaceutical help to, well, round the bases and hit homeruns. But I find it interesting that MLB brazenly embraces commercials that advertize PEDs for its (aging) fans, but harrumphingly scolds aging baseball players like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire who use different types of PEDs to keep rounding the bases and hitting homeruns past their prime.

Steroids and impotence pills are basically the same thing; what Joe Posnanski and Bill James call a fountain of youth. A baseball player should start to decline in his early 30’s. Steroids allow a player to extend the prime of his career. They helped Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens actually get better in their late 30’s and early 40’s. PEDs and impotence pills exist because of a common fear: Manny and your Grampy are both afraid of having only warning track power. Why do some men use steroids and Viagra? Just ask Big Papi, or ask your own Grandpoppy.

It’s human nature to look for any help we can get, consequences be darned. Let’s imagine some scientist creates a PED that does for the brain what steroids do for muscles. We know darn well that some PhD student, with his doctoral degree at stake, would be popping PEDs to finish that thesis on time, even if it gave him pimples and shrank his joystick.

In fact, we all use PEDs. Every night, millions of men and women hit up the bars and have some drinks to build up confidence to go over and talk to potential mates (and/or make potential mates appear better looking).

Sure, I guess baseball could keep banning every new steroid as it comes along. And fans could keep on showing outrage and pretending to hold the moral high ground (while secretly happy that players on their favorite team juice up…I refer, of course, to fans of the 2004* and 2007* World Champion Red Sox). I know, we’re supposed to oppose steroids because of the side effects (e.g. acne, heart failure). But, really, why does Major League Baseball care about some players shrinking one set of balls so they can better hit another type of ball? Baseball has no problem welcoming ad money from ED drugs, even though they make old men go blind.