Baseball stats guru Bill James believes that steroids (or some derivative) will be eventually be safe and legal, but that doesn’t mean he thinks that Congress wasted money on the steroids hearings. He says as much in a recent Q&A session with readers on his site, providing four reasons why he feels that way, though I think reasons 3 and 4 aren’t particularly sturdy. The exchange:

“Q: In your recent piece on [Roger] Clemens, you write, ‘My view is that…it was an entirely appropriate use of the power of congress to step in and tell them to fix the problem.’ What was ‘the problem’? I assume you’re referring to steroids and HGH, but why do you consider them a problem?

A: I would say there were four reasons that it was a problem:

1) It was disrespectful of the law,

2) It promoted the widespread use of potentially dangerous and harmful substances by young people aspiring to be athletes,

3) The public largely despised the use of steroids by athletes, and

4) If sports are a significant cultural activity, which I believe they are, then it damages the culture for sports to be allowed to become something foreign and unnatural.”