Tim McClelland: Steroids part of era

No mea kulpa from this umpire…

Tim McClelland is a fan of baseball, in addition to being a Major League Baseball umpire, and he’s tired of the constant steroid talk.

“I’d like to see people kind of get over it,” McClelland said. “It was part of that era. In 2004, baseball instituted the ban on steroids. The previous 15 years, you just have to realize there were a lot of people taking steroids.”

...It was the first time weight training was introduced to the sport, and yes, many players took shortcuts to build those muscles.

“They used it to make themselves better,” McClelland said. “I can’t fault a player for doing that. It was not against the rules of baseball, so I can’t fault a player for trying to make himself better.”

The MLB banned performance enhancers in 2004. In spite of efforts to clean up the game, not every substance shows up in a test.

“I had a catcher tell me, ‘Us peons have to get off steroids; we can’t afford them,’” McClelland said. “He said the guys that make the big money, because they put up the big numbers, can get the synthetic steroids, and they can stay on them, and that’s not fair.

“What he was telling me is that there were a lot of guys on steroids.”