We kick off a new midweek series that is not single-sport focused today with the first edition of the Wednesday Wizengamot: taking on the question of what to do with all the players in MLB history who used performance-enhancing drugs to get an edge on the competition. Their statistics are lies, basically, and the offending players should not be allowed to retain the numbers they achieved while cheating the sport.

[Editor’s Note: for those not down with Harry Potter references, the Wizengamot is “wizarding Britain’s high court of law and parliament.” We pass judgments here that have lo legal bearing or standing whatsoever, unfortunately. Yet we take our roles as journalists seriously, like it is the twentieth century. Be warned; you may not like what we decide/determine. Doh!]

Almost 10 years ago now, a once-respected website that has now gone to the dogs posed the question to readers; this is what the public determined. First, 41 percent felt no statistical penalty should be applied to the offenders, which is pretty sad as a precursor in 2015 to what has happened in American society as a whole. For generations, kids have been raised to believe that cheating and lying were wrong. What gives?

Corruption and greed, basically, the ruiners of society since the dawn of human communities, no doubt. We’ve written about this before, in terms of American values going by the wayside in an effort to “win” in whatever arena is put before us; people look the other way at cheating if it benefits them, even if they still don’t like the idea of being cheated themselves, personally. It makes literally no sense, but hey … humans!

Another 36 percent of readers back then agreed that PED users should be penalized, although the how/what determinants were undecided. We believe that it is relatively easy to see when a player was using, and those years alone should be penalized significantly, based on the individual’s own established baseline of production before they cheated, in conjunction with historical trends for aging, decline, and fading.

The writer(s) of that piece came up with a 33-percent penalty, which is something we’re fine with in a general sense, although it may not be specific to each offender. Every player benefitted in different ways from the PED use, and perhaps it’s too much to parse through each individual statistical profile to determine what is appropriate. Wait, who are we kidding? AI can do that for us; perhaps, it does it already.

The last group of readers—23 percent—were the harshest: “the records of juicers should be stripped entirely — press ctrl-a and then delete.” This effect has been seen already in the failed attempts to get into Cooperstown for well-known PED cheaters like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. This drastic measure is akin to the one-strike-and-you’re-out policy of hypocrites everywhere, though, as if we’ve all not sinned.

It also would clear out the honest achievements of the players, all of whom were tempted for one reason or another. Even in sentencing hearings, the convicted gets character witnesses to attest to the better angels of someone’s nature, even if they committed terrible crimes against humanity. Are all PED users pure evil? Of course not. Choosing this option also serves a big warning to those still tempted, which is the likely point.

We are comfortable with the loss of one-third production for years clearly identified as cheating ones. We gave Bonds a lot of love in our MLB Awards Analysis series—prior to his 1999 shift to PED monster. We gave him nothing but hate after that, of course. That’s the way it should be, of course, but we now live in a different world, even from the time of Summer 2015. Maybe now? All of it should be stricken forever.

Alas, we love how the linked article ends: “The debate over steroids in baseball is bitter and divisive, but this solution represents a compromise, based on real data, that attempts to meet all camps somewhere in the middle. (Just kidding, this will never be settled and will remain a festering puncture wound to the game of baseball for generations to come. Play ball!)”

Couldn’t agree more.