The big why

It has long struck me that the missing element in the issue of performance-enhancing drugs — in baseball and other sports — has been a public examination, by the athletes involved, of the ethics. The big why, if you will.

The surest sign that the players always regarded PED use as unethical was, and is, the secrecy surrounding it. A pitcher gets a cortisone shot for his sore shoulder, it's known. Same pitcher gets human growth hormone for the same injury, he's not letting anybody know it.

Here, from the Chicago Sun-Times, is a first-person account of his own big why from Jim Parque, who went 31-34 over six major league seasons around the turn of the millennium, mostly with the White Sox.

And here is a piece on the reaction from the White Sox clubhouse. Ozzie Guillen's comment ... well, that's Ozzie.