I guess I’m just terminally naive. Not for one second during his spectacular run did I connect Jake Arrieta with performance-enhancing drugs.

And Dee Gordon? Come on!

There is no one moral to the story. There are several. One is that we’ve got to stop thinking about PEDs exclusively in terms of power, be it power hitting or power pitching. We have been conditioned to think of outsized sluggers such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa, as well as a power pitcher such as Roger Clemens.

Dee Gordon is a wispy second baseman. The “exogenous testosterone’’ and Clostebol that somehow found their way into his body — his explanation is “My test results showed that I ingested something that contained prohibited substances’’ — did not make him a 35-homer guy. But he improved substantially in the past two years, finishing last year with 205 base hits, a league-leading .333 batting average, and a league-leading 58 stolen bases.

There might be significantly more pop in the bat, enabling harder-hit grounders to get through the hole or somehow producing more line drives. And let’s not forget that, way back when, the villainous Ben Johnson used steroids to run faster.

A second moral is that for the known 50 or 60 years we have been confronted with the specter of illegal drug use in sports (at least as far back as the 1960 Olympics), the reality is that the bad chemists are always ahead of the good ones.

Next we must accept the premise that athletes simply want to succeed and are willing to take risks, both with their long-term health and their reputation if and when they get caught. Crime can pay. Just ask Nelson Cruz, for one. Or Melky Cabrera. Or Jhonny Peralta.

The sad reality brought home to us in the past few days is that on the subject of improved performance, everyone — and I mean absolutely Everyone — is now presumed guilty from the start. Now, we know this is definitely not true, and we can only imagine the anger and frustration felt by the clean athletes, who I choose to believe constitute the majority.

With me it always circles back to the ongoing Hall of Fame dilemma. As a voter, I now have two annual choices when certain names are presented to me on the ballot. I either have to play judge and jury, attempting to play the morality and fairness cards when assessing the candidacy of people whose statistical achievements would seem to make them obvious first-ballot selections, or I can always throw up my hands and say, “Numbers are numbers. I don’t know which juiced pitchers pitched to which juiced batters and so I will just let them all in.’’

Thus far I have gone the first route, I have yet to vote for the all-time home run leader; a man who hit more than 600 home runs, including three years of 60-plus; a man who won 354 games and a record seven Cy Young Awards; and the first man to hit 70 home runs in a season. I did not vote for a 3,000-hit, 500-homer man who is now off the ballot.

But just to show how arbitrary I can be, I did vote for Mike Piazza, who is widely suspected of having been a PED user, and I will continue to vote for Jeff Bagwell, another suspected user. Why? Well, I guess I’m just not convinced of their guilt. Anyway, I can understand how someone would consider my position to be quite contradictory.

I hate the topic. I mean, I loathe it. Arguing baseball merits is fun and stimulating. That, and only that, is what we should be doing when voting for the Hall of Fame.

A classic baseball argument was the candidacy of Jack Morris. Either you put stock in the 254 wins or you didn’t. Either you were impressed by his being the biggest winner of a decade or you weren’t. Either you felt a career ERA of 3.90 was, in and of itself, Hall of Fame worthy or you didn’t. Either you bought into the idea that he was considered for years and years to be the personification of an “ace’’ or “No. 1 starter,’’ or you didn’t.

But it was all about performance, and nothing else. I voted for him as long as he was on the ballot. But after 15 years, he didn’t make it, and I can accept the verdict because it was hardly a clear-cut case. I respect the opposing viewpoint.

By the way, do any of us know for sure that Jack Morris didn’t get away with, you know, something all those years? No, we don’t. I would hate to think so.

But is the Hall of Fame really the most important issue? No. What is not discussed enough is the effect of PEDs on game outcomes and on championships.

Justin Verlander sounded off when he heard about the Gordon suspension that drug offenders should not be allowed to play while they are appealing. I think it is safe to say that more than one World Series-winning team during the past 20 years or so has been fueled by a player or two who beat the system.

You have to know that this is precisely what some out there are saying about the Red Sox and Big Papi, whose name showed up on that list 13 years ago. We in Boston don’t want to talk about it or even think about it. I understand that. I’m right there myself. But we are probably never going to know.

And don’t think for a second some people out there weren’t questioning how skinny little Pedro Martinez could throw so hard in his prime. There were skinny guys who had a great-arm gift 50 years ago, and people just accepted the phenomenon. Nowadays there is a quick assumption that there must be a nefarious story behind the story. That is what PEDs have done to the sport.

The flip side is that perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. There are many who think we have to stop moralizing and get practical, that if everyone has access to something that will enhance performance, then let them all have at it. If it means there might be a long-term heath risk, well, that’s something everyone must consider. That would be an individual’s choice. No one would ever be forced to use anything, but anyone would be permitted to do so. May the best chemist win.

I know there are a lot of Russian athletes who wish this were the climate right now.

Along those lines, I have long advocated that the Baseball Hall of Fame take the pressure off us voters by offering a permanent disclaimer right outside the room where the plaques hang. There would be a statement saying that there was a period of time in which performance-enhancing drugs had invaded baseball and that many of the people you will see honored here performed during that era. You, the fan, can feel however you wish about them, but we have chosen to have people voted on by their accomplishments, period.

Were the Hall to do that, yes, I would immediately vote for Messrs. Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, and McGwire­. I’d much prefer not attempting to be judge and jury.

Trust me when I tell you that I completely blew it in 1998. I was so caught up in the exciting McGwire-Sosa home run battle that even after looking at McGwire up close and oohing and aahing over his massive physique, and even realizing that Sosa looked a lot different than the guy who had begun his career with the Rangers, I chalked it up to great training methods and nothing else.

By the time Bonds started cranking out big home run numbers, things we different. By then, we all knew. But this idea that the media was engaged in a conspiracy of some sort to suppress the information is false. Some of us were just plain stupid. I know I was.

All these years later, I just hate dealing with it. I choose to admire what Jake Arrieta has been doing as being completely legit. And then comes Dee Gordon.

Who’s next? I can’t stand it.

Bob Ryan’s column appears regularly in the Globe. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.