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What is the sound of silence?

Pointless philosophical drivel? Sure. But also an important question when posed in reference to the A-Rod scandal. One of the biggest sports stories of the past few months at least, and three POB writers (and one guest writer!), one of them an avowed Yankees-hater, have remained conspicuously silent on the subject. What does this mean? That we all have lives--jobs, wives, kids, what have you--and are too busy to post? Sure, it means all of that. But it also means this: the A-Rod scandal is boring.

Go ahead, say it. It's okay to admit it. It doesn't take anything away from it; a story can be important and boring at the same time.  But even for A-Rod haters, what's interesting about this story? He took an illegal substance, but at this point, it's starting to seem like everyone did, at least among the great hitters of this era. We don't get an infuriating/entertaining denial a la Bonds/Clemens, or fun, evasive squirming a la Sosa/McGwire. We get a perfunctory apology and that's it. Baseball's cheaters have wised up, and in doing so, become less fun to hate. A-Rod seems as lifeless when reacting to a steroids scandal as he does playing in front of 40,000 home fans that hate him.

The big news--that 103 other people also failed drug tests--isn't even news, since we don't know who they are. And there don't seem to be any signs of Major League Baseball changing its policies. So, to sum up: we've confirmed the sneaking suspicion that everybody's been cheating, we're still not going to do anything about it, and A-Rod is sorry, but he promises that he only took substances that one time they were testing for them, and he's not even sure what they were, and he's totally sorry. Seriously, the most interesting part of this whole story was when A-Rod was bright orange for his entire confession and used the term "loosey-goosey" for some reason. When do actual baseball games start?