How Will We View Alex Rodriguez 100 Years From Now?

It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the general population, not to mention elite athletes, routinely takes advantage of the services of anti-aging clinics that will help them optimize their biology.

The difference from today, of course, would be that advances in all methods of anti-aging, including drugs, would be rendered safe, healthy and legal. Athletes would be able to compete at a high level into say, their 50s and 60s. Given this longevity, every single career record — for home runs, strikeouts, stolen bases, you name it — would be broken. The achievements of players who competed in past eras — before the ability to fully optimize human biology was realized — would be appreciated in their historical context. 

Whatever the ultimate fate of Alex Rodriguez’s baseball career turns out to be, it is quite possible that future generations will view him, and his baseball peers who have used PEDs, as victims of circumstance. These players simply did everything they could do to compete at the highest level, and yet the kind of safe, healthy and legal body enhancements that will be available in 100 years (if not much sooner) simply were not available. 

Of course, we’re not there yet. And A-Rod is accused of breaking rules that are in place today, not ones that we imagine might exist in the future. But the drugs will change. And our sense of ethics and our rules of fair play will need to keep up with them.

What do you think?

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