Let’s not waste time on the ethics involved with steroids in baseball.

If you use drugs or artificial enhancement to achieve success, then the success you have is artificial.

If you, the baseball fan, have a problem with it, then stop watching.

I love home runs. I don’t care if athletes are “cheating.” It’s entertainment.

Instead, let’s talk about people.

I have never hit a home run. I don’t know the feeling of hitting the ball so well that it launches from the bat effortlessly, racing over the wall into a car window, some stands or a drunken father’s baseball glove.

Perfection.

My best friend Jesse hits homeruns. He plays baseball for a private college in Kansas. He is on the team because he CAN hit homeruns.

He has a powerful build — 5’10, 195 pounds.

Jesse has never taken steroids. But his coach told him once that if he wanted to make it to the next level, “he had the stuff to give him.”

But Jesse is naturally strong and a gym rat. He works out a lot. He enjoys it. He recently told me that he was benching 275 pounds consistently.

Speaking of consistency, everyone has something that has been consistent in their lives — something that they have always done, or came back to, no matter the age.

When I asked Jesse what the one thing in his life that has always been there, he said, “Baseball…Damn it, Cole. Baseball.”

His mom is addicted to alcohol and painkillers. The last time I saw Jesse’s mom she was about 100 pounds. Her arms were bones. He teeth were yellow. She was fried — she looked 85, even though she is a little under 50.

Jesse often stayed at our place.  In high school, he had a streak — six months without spending a night at his mom’s house.

Well, Jesse can play baseball. He went to college to play baseball.

He isn’t dumb. He is an honor student with a knack for math and science and a dose of street smarts that come with small town life and abusive parents.

Did I tell you Jesse could hit homeruns?

Last year, he led the team with three homeruns. Not much some might say, but Jesse has never taken steroids. But he has considered it.

I wouldn’t judge him if he took steroids, but I tell him, “Get your degree. Learn something to fall back on.”

But Jesse loves baseball. It is his constant, passion and stability.

Baseball is his route to a paycheck or an education — or a life.

I would worry about his health, not his ethics. I’d hate to see him become addicted, or lose himself in the desire for bigger muscles, and more homeruns.

Perfection.

Jesse knows the right thing to do. Just like all the professional baseball players who fear urine tests and blood samples do.

But have you ever hit a homerun?