Without Doping, Where's the Fun?

Doping in sports makes some fans uncomfortable, but it keeps others on the edges of their seats, writes Joel Stein in the LA Times. Case in point: This year's largely shenanigans-free Tour de France has been an exercise in boredom. “Before you argue that your favorite sport has to get tough about drugs,” Stein writes, brace yourself for “years of slow, amateurish, uninspired athleticism.”

“I've gotten so used to superhuman feats that I can't watch guys relying on only their natural talents,” writes Stein. It’s like “watching Spider-Man try to scale a building without his bug-bite-induced spidey skills.” If drugs are too controversial to be allowed, Stein recommends “a tax on performance enhancement”: linemen wearing weights on their ankles, or sluggers’ home-run counts being cut by a few. (More drug use stories.)