Will Carroll works for Baseball Prospectus and is the author of "The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems."

"I tried to find a book that explained it. But it wasn't there. Everything had a viewpoint or a bias to it. I was stunned at how much pro-steroid talk there was. And the anti-steroid stuff, which claimed steroids were responsible for everything from global warming to the price of oil.

"That's what gets lost. The middle ground. If you're trying to find the effects of steroids, they're just not there. They can't account for it. There's an effect, but you can't find it. It's buried in there between bad pitching, smaller ballparks and players that work out for 12 hours a day.

"Watching the game, for the normal fan, they shouldn't think about it. People always like to point at Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. But who pointed at Mike Morse? At Ryan Franklin? Did those guys get the bad batch? The steroid that didn't work?

"We need to use education and take some of the mystique away. Because steroids don't turn you into Barry Bonds. They don't even turn you into Mike Morse. Give me every steroid in the book for a year, and I still can't turn on a 94 mile-an-hour fastball.

"I hear people say they need a level playing field. We don't have a level playing field. There are guys that are so much more talented than others. Or how about having virtual natural selection with a Bonds or a [Ken] Griffey Jr., whose parents were athletes? Bret Boone was third generation. They're virtually designed to be athletes. If anything, steroids can actually level the playing field.

"It's tough. I feel bad about it. I don't want any kids dead. I don't want my kids using steroids or human growth hormone. Because we don't know what the long-term effects are."