Well, if one buys into this argument, which certainly has its merits, what about the pitchers who faced these hitters? With the exception of Roger Clemens and Andy Petitte most notably, shouldn’t the accomplishments of pitchers like Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, John Smoltz, Roy Oswalt, Tom Glavine, Roy Halliday and Johann Santana be given even greater credence for achieving remarkable levels of excellence during the “steroid era” of hitters?

While we hear a great deal about diminishing the statistics of hitters in the steroid era, we don’t hear much talk about giving the pitchers of this period extra credit for excelling in this era of pumped-up hitters. But they deserve it.

Perhaps this asterisk era of baseball for hitters should also be known as the exclamation point era of pitching – a new Golden Age of pitching – for the dozens of truly outstanding hurlers that battled these enhanced hitters every day. Just as the standard for making the Hall of Fame will be harder for all hitters of this era, perhaps it should be easier for the pitchers who didn’t cheat.

Remember, whenever there’s a dark side, there’s almost always a bright side as well.

To relate this to the corporate world – our world – just as there are companies out there betraying public trust, greedily pursuing their best interests at the expense of their customers, there are companies always working to do right by their customers and the communities they serve.

Some call this a dark era for corporate America, thanks to the bad actions of bad actors in a few bad industries – namely the financial and insurance services, banking and automotive industries. Yet, the majority of industries have performed admirably. They keep their customers first. They run clean, socially responsible businesses. And these companies become integral parts of their communities, which helps make them part of something bigger than themselves. The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group – all their bottlers — and Nestlé Waters North America are just such companies. Check out their social responsibility efforts.

As lawmakers look to reform regulatory systems, they should focus on the bad guys and not paint all of industry with a broad brush. Leave the good guys alone and let them keep building America stronger. Consumers should look at companies that way too. Just as a few bad ballplayers shouldn’t taint every athlete in America’s game, nor should a few bad actors in the business world taint all the great companies and brands that continue to make our communities strong and America vibrant. And play ball the right way.

Help our leaders keep perspective, America. We ask that you do as well.

The American Beverage Association this week received a couple inquiries, via letter and phone, from middle-schoolers asking for our support in lowering the drinking age from 21 to 19 or 18. (Obviously, these young ladies didn’t realize ABA represents the non-alcoholic beverage industry.)

Now this idea may have its pros to go with some strong cons, as even many university presidents are pushing for lowering the drinking age as a means to reduce underage drinking, as well as binge drinking, at universities. Frankly, that’s not our issue to debate here.

What is striking, however, is that a 7th-grader… a perhaps 13-year-old…is so concerned that the drinking age is too high at 21 that she felt compelled to write a term paper making the arguments for lowering the drinking age. And that she is actively working to garner support for this shift.

One must admire her moxy, but one must also be concerned that this young lady (and another middle-schooler who called ABA) is so occupied with the current drinking age she’s actively working to lower it.

There are those in our society – scientists, academics, activists and people who claim to be consumer advocates – who spend nearly every waking moment of their careers demonizing soft drinks and other non-alcoholic beverages. And one result is that our teenagers don’t know what to drink anymore. The know-it-all adults are taking away all options that have any hint of taste or any hint of refreshment or any hint of fun.

So if every beverage except milk and tap water is evil – as these activists would lead you to believe – what’s left for a teenager to drink, especially in a social setting? Even in the Leave it to Beaver world, it wasn’t milk.

Just some perspective on the damaging effects of taking a cause way too far, going beyond the world of common sense that most people live in.

Soft drinks are a refreshing beverage meant to be enjoyed. Nothing more, nothing less. And as millions of Americans prove every day, you can be a healthy person and enjoy a soft drink.

In our industry, the food police like to go after soft drinks, energy drinks and bottled water. They insist these products are wrong for teens, should be banned from high schools and their sale restricted for teens in other venues. Now, a full-calorie soda has about 150 calories, a small portion in the 2,000+ calorie diet recommended for an average person; active teens can most certainly handle and need more than that as they’re burning off calories. Bottled water has zero calories, yet that gets demonized by the Nannies because it’s not tap water.

A question for the intelligentsia: What are teenagers, or even preteens for that matter, supposed to drink when they get together to socialize? Milk or juice or tap water? This trio is actually the limited, recommended beverage choices for teens by the Institute of Medicine – whose ideas are then peddled by the food police.

Get out of your science labs and ivory towers, folks. And get serious. If you really believe that’s what teens will drink when they get together, you’re living in another world. And naively contributing to a dangerous world.

An unfortunate but age-old lure for teens at social gatherings is alcohol — beer or the harder stuff. Spring tends to be a time of year when teens get together more, especially when the warmer weather draws them outdoors. It’s also one of those disappointing times when stories like this one from a Northern Virginia high school become more the norm than the exception. A group of students, in this case female athletes, go to a party, drink alcohol and get suspended. Thankfully, none of them wrapped a car around a tree afterwards.

Maybe it would be a bit easier to resist the temptations of alcohol if teens had some legitimate and realistic options. Non-alcoholic products conducive to teen socializing because they taste good (soft drinks), have some carbonation (energy drinks) or are hip (a word from our generation) to carry around.

But this becomes harder when the food police demonize these perfectly fine refreshments and co-opt parents into believing their teens shouldn’t be drinking them. Would you rather they drink the beer? Because we’re quite confident they’re not going to drink the milk.

Look, we’re not Pollyanish either. Alcohol is always going to be a temptation for teens. Our products aren’t going to eliminate that problem. But teen drinking won’t have any chance of diminishing if, after receiving the good talks from their parents, our children don’t have viable options to turn to in social settings. Then it becomes just that much harder to resist the peer pressure.

To those geniuses in academia, step outside into the real world. Stop demonizing safe, refreshing products that taste good like soda, energy drinks and bottled waters. You’re contributing to more problems than you’re solving. Have an energy drink and wake up to the real world.

American taxpayers are asked to bail out these irresponsible industries to the tune of billions of dollars. And federal leaders bite and feed these companies.

Now, the most prominent of these beggars, AIG, decides to bite the hand that’s feeding it and use the taxpayer bailout money to pay more than $200 million in bonuses. In fact, 73 AIG employees received bonuses of $1 million or more. Worse, these bonus babies are from the business unit responsible for creating AIG’s financial mess.

Then there’s the rest of the American business and manufacturing community. They manage their companies well. Even though the economy has knocked them back too, they’re making tough cuts, trimming back and reorganizing their strategies so they can start to bounce back and grow again. Pretty confident there are no million dollar bonuses in these industries; in fact, most responsible companies are doing such things as eliminating bonuses, freezing salaries and cutting 401(k) matches this year.

Furthermore, these are companies which employ blue collar, union and white collar workers – unlike the heavily white collar financial sector companies getting the bailouts. These jobs are in real towns, big and small, supporting real families with real needs and costs – and no safety net.

Yet, none of these companies or industries comes to Washington with their hands out even though the economy has knocked them on their bottoms as well. Rather, these companies – including ours – go to Washington offering them a hand up as they try to resolve tough public policy issues.

We try to be part of the solution, even when problems we didn’t create make it tough for us to operate.

The beverage industry is one of many that conduct business responsibly. Our customers are always the priority; we’re responsive to our communities and our leaders. We do right by folks.

So then, why is Washington slewing money at mismanaged, irresponsible companies like AIG and others; while federal and state policy-makers are looking to tax the responsible companies in pure money grabs to pay for their failed ventures and other budget woes not of our making? Our industry is not alone in having the tax target on its back because of government spending. But taxing responsible companies that do things right will retard economic recovery by costing thousands more Americans their jobs and robbing companies of the ability to invest in growth and new jobs. None of this is good for the American family or the economy.

More importantly, what message is our government sending? Play by the rules and get taxed. Don’t play by the rules and get loads of taxpayer money.

This is still America, right?

The New York Times reported last week about an alarming rise among children in eating disorders and anxiety about the foods they eat.

This is largely being driven by aggressive activists who try to label foods as bad for you and good for you. We highly recommend this article as a must-read for parents as it is full of practical advice based on real-life experiences of doctors, psychologists and dietitians who are dealing with these eating disorders every day. And we commend the NY Times for reporting on this problem; we’re sure the food police have been beating on their door ever since.

New York Times reporter Abby Ellin wrote: “While scarcely any expert would criticize parents for paying attention to children’s diets, many doctors, dietitians and eating disorder specialists worry that some parents are becoming overzealous, even obsessive, in efforts to engender good eating habits in children. With the best of intentions, these parents may be creating an unhealthy aura around food.”

We need to cut the parents some break here. After all, they’re bombarded with extreme messages in the popular media about “bad” foods that you must avoid at your own peril. They hear it from academics, activist groups and Hollywood doctors who know the best way to draw attention to themselves, and get on TV, is to demonize a food or attack a company. So these self-proclaimed experts stir up extreme scenarios that have minimal basis in science and no foundation in common sense. And this creates anxiety and irrational views toward food.

These blame-the-food messages certainly contrast with the hard science. Most recently, a Harvard study last week that showed balancing calories is what really matters, not what particular foods you eat. Any food can fit into a diet, so long as the calories you consume are balanced with the exercise you get. Calories consumed balanced with calories burned – this is the equation to weight maintenance.

What these studies and news stories suggest is that a little common sense is in order when it comes to food. Of course, we want our children to eat balanced meals and have nutritious diets. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for foods that are fun.

We need to stop telling people what to eat or not eat and instead teach them how to eat. Teach them the proper place for all foods. Again, how to balance calories consumed with calories burned. Maybe then, we’ll give our children the tools they need to lead balanced lifestyles as adults with a healthy mindset about eating.

Laura Collins, author of “Eating with Your Anorexic,” told the Times: “It’s a tragedy that we’ve developed this moralistic, restrictive and unhappy relationship with food. I think it is making kids nutty, it’s sucking the life out of our relationship with food.”

And Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, put the problem this way:

“We’re seeing a lot of anxiety in these kids. They go to birthday parties, and if it’s not granola cake they feel like they can’t eat it. The culture has led both them and their parents to take the public health messages to an extreme.”

Maybe Dr. Bulik could walk across campus and talk to her fellow Tar Heel and notorious bad-food extremist Dr. Barry Popkin about the harm his alarmist rants are creating. A dose of reality and perspective are what Popkin and his posse need.

The food police need to chill – they’re causing more harm than good.

Our kids’ homes and the security they provide are in growing jeopardy.

Our kids’ heroes are fallen with steroids, drug and tabloid scandals.

Yet some get more hung up over a kid having a soda pop.

Do all of us have our heads straight right now?