Now that Andy Pettitte has spoken, we’re done with all matters of drugs and baseball for the offseason, right? It’s been a taxing three months on bloggers (pity the poor, basement-dwelling bloggers!) – have you any idea what it takes to summon the energy to write about the twin engines of baseball’s apocalyptic movement, HGH and steroids, day after day? (First nobody watched the World Series and now drugs are ruining the sport? No! Baseball is dying!) Surely commenters everywhere have run out of invective to hurl at Roger Clemens; hell, even ESPN’s Karl Ravech is so drained from these discussions that he is practically begging that, pesky large fly to return to the set of Baseball Tonight. Distractions, please! (This isn’t a bad one if you’re beginning fantasy baseball research – the top 100 baseball prospects.)

For a real discussion-starter, we turn to New Yorker scribe Malcolm Gladwell for his ruminations on HGH (these musings are a month old, but seem to fit nicely to fit with this topic). He drops the phrase “intellectual sloppiness” on MLB in defending the use of HGH:

“Similarly, it is perfectly legal for an athlete to get painkillers after an injury, so he can continue playing (and, I would point out, risk further injury.) It is not legal for that athlete to take Human Growth Hormone, in order to speed his recovery from that same injury. Again, why? What is the distinction? Why is it okay to play hurt but not okay to try and not play hurt? There may be a perfectly valid reason here as well. But don’t we need to spell out what it is?

I realize that the people running major league baseball and the NFL are not philosophers. But the intellectual sloppiness with which this current crusade has been conducted is appalling.”

And … go.