As a result of the "steroids in baseball" issue there has been a lot written - and said - about a "culture of permissiveness" that existed in Major League Baseball. The prevailing wisdom - or "P.W." - on this subject is that for at least the past 50 years MLB knew that players were using amphetamines in order to get through the season, and that depending who you listened to this use was on the order of about 70 percent of the players.

At the dawn of the steroid era, which despite what you may think started in the 80s and not the 90s, the P.W. employs the logic that since baseball already allowed - by ignoring - players to use "uppers," the players had no reason to believe the league wouldn't want them to use steroids. Especially since there were no rules that expressly banned steroids.

As baseball players started to look like football players, and the teams and the league reveled in the power and glory of the resulting emergence of the long ball, players had even more incentive to "juice up." Teams like the Oakland A's celebrated the size and power of their players, and even had a season-long power-lifting competition among the players, the results of which were posted on a blackboard in their clubhouse.

Other teams picked up on the lead set by the Oakland A's, and certainly nobody in the league office wanted to do anything to derail this power train...after all, chicks dig the long ball.

Which brings us back to the question of, "Did baseball's culture of permissiveness give the players an excuse for using performance-enhancing drugs?"

The short answer is, "No!"

Here's the long answer. There is no doubt that the baseball hierarchy - including the players' union - knew that players were using drugs. This is evidenced by the way all parties conducted themselves during labor negotiations, negotiations that specifically dealt with drugs and drug testing. Speed was never prohibited, steroids were never prohibited, and there were no real testing measures in place to deter players from using, nor were there any real penalties in place to punish the players in the unlikely event anyone got busted. Therefore, this permissive culture did exist in MLB.

The problem with ascribing this excuse to the players for their use of these drugs is that the players themselves - with two notable exceptions - have NOT used this excuse!

Besides Jose Canseco and the late Ken Caminiti, no player has come out and said that they used steroids because they worked, they needed them, and that they knew that no one would stop them because steroids weren't prohibited by baseball. Canseco has been unrepentant in recounting his use of the juice and is on record as saying that there is no way he would have accomplished what he did if not for the steroids. He also has said that since the teams and the league knew that players were already using other drugs to improve their performance - amphetamines - the players who used saw no reason not to use steroids.