Steve Bechler deserved better than this.

He deserved to have his life -- and his heart-breaking death -- be more than just an excuse for every amateur doctor and drug expert from coast to coast to start pointing fingers at his sport, his trainers, his union and his teammates.

"The time will come," says Bechler's agent, Seth Levinson, "when all the collateral issues need to be explored and examined. But at this point, I just wish the focus was on Steve's life and character, as a good-natured, good-humored, all-around good guy."

	“	At some point there has to be an examination of why these supplements are legal and why they can be purchased by anyone over the counter. When people walk into a store to buy a legal item, they're relying on the goverment to make sure those items are safe when taken in their legal dosage. In the case of these supplements, there are no restrictions on who can buy them. And there is no prominently displayed warning, unlike there is on a pack of cigarettes. ”
		— Seth Levinson, agent for Steve Bechler

It's been too easy this last week for everyone to forget that this was a human being. With a career, like yours and mine. With dreams, like yours and mine. With a family and a pregnant wife and people whose lives will never be the same.

Any time an athlete dies young, we are too quick to ask, "Why?" And once we do ask, we are too quick to yank the simple answers out of the breeze and offer up the most convenient solutions.

It's been too easy to look at this tragedy, at the sight of a professional baseball player being stricken during a routine spring-training drill, and think of this as "a baseball thing." But this isn't just an issue that baseball has to deal with. This is an issue our whole society has to deal with.

We don't even know yet how much or how little ephedra or ephedrine had to do with Steve Bechler's death. Only the coroner's report can tell us that.

But we do know this: He wasn't doing anything illegal.

He was taking a product you can buy in any health-food store, or even over the internet. It wasn't banned by the FDA or any branch of the federal government. So before we all start screaming that baseball needs to outlaw this product, shouldn't we be asking why our country hasn't already done that?

It isn't only baseball players who take supplements containing ephedra or ephedrine. It's high school linebackers, and guys playing power forward in the CBA, and half that crew you lift weights with at the gym.

And who knows how many of these people even know what they're taking?

"At some point," Levinson says, "there has to be an examination of why these supplements are legal and why they can be purchased by anyone over the counter. When people walk into a store to buy a legal item, they're relying on the goverment to make sure those items are safe when taken in their legal dosage.

"In the case of these supplements, there are no restrictions on who can buy them. And there is no prominently displayed warning, unlike there is on a pack of cigarettes. There is no person I know who will read the fine print and continue reading after the fine print says not to use this if you're pregnant."

The fine print doesn't even tell you that the FDA has found evidence linking ephedrine to the deaths of both athletes and non-athletes. At some point, when we have all our facts straight in this case, we need to make sure we print those facts in very large type.

Because of Steve Bechler, everyone in baseball is going to get a sobering education about ephedrine and all the legal products it's contained in -- the Ripped Fuels and the Metabolifes, the Thermoburns and the Hydroxycuts. By the time this spring is over, there won't be a player in either league who doesn't know the possible danger that lurks in every bottle.

But who is going to educate your sons when they walk into your local health-food store, where the only employee in sight might be some kid behind the counter who is no older than they are?

"The unfortunate answer is: They'll get that education from the kid behind the counter," says Cindy Thomas, program manager for the Kansas City-based Center for Drug-Free Sport. "And that's the scary part. We're talking about an industry where it's the manufacturers and the folks promoting the product who are the ones providing the quote-unquote 'education.' "

Well, that needs to change. All of that. Not just the laws of baseball, but the laws we all live by, the laws that put those supplements on the shelves. Not just the rules, but the culture that encourages athletes everywhere to live on the edge of those rules.

"You can't just say to these athletes, 'No, don't do it,' " Thomas says. "You need to give them alternatives -- safe alternatives: Nutrition. Lifestyle. And what they can do to safely reach a better performance. Come to camp in shape. There are no shortcuts."

But you can't blame athletes for trying to find every advantage, either. That's the nature of who they are, what they do and why they do it. Next time you read an ad for a product that claims it will boost your energy, ask yourself why you wouldn't use that product if it were perfectly legal and sold in a store that probably has "health" or "nutrition" as part of its name.

It's been too easy this week to forget that baseball players are just a fraction of the real issue. The real issue is not how we can help baseball solve its problems, but how baseball can help all of us solve a problem we haven't been able to deal with adequately as a country, and as a society.

So we need the government to get to work on those legalities. We need baseball and its union to get to work on making sure something positive comes of the death of a young player whose only motive was to get in better shape to further his career. And the fact is, they will. They have already agreed to meet on this topic, once more of the facts are known.

There has been no more ridiculous insinuation all week than the suggestion that the union, by not agreeing to testing on just about everything, doesn't care if its players live or die. If Orioles owner Peter Angelos wanted to cry out for a ban on ephedrine in baseball after Bechler's death, that was one thing. To politicize this tragedy by blaming the union for resisting ephedrine-testing was in downright bad taste.

"There isn't anyone at the union I haven't spoken to this week," Levinson says. "I've spoken to Don Fehr, to Gene Orza, to Michael Weiner, to Bob Lenaghan. ... They've called not just to offer their condolences, but to actively do anything they can to help the family and to promote the education of the players. Then, if any good can come out of this tragedy, we should all be hell-bent on achieving that."

It's possible, once the facts are in, that the union and management will band together to jointly lobby Congress to take more aggressive action on supplements in general and ephedrine in particular. It's all but certain they will join together to make sure education becomes a much higher priority.

We have all read this week that the NCAA and NFL have banned ephedrine. That looks good, but what may be even more important -- what we haven't read -- is that they also have enlisted the Center for Drug-Free Sport to provide an educational hotline of sorts for all their players on all supplements.

It would be reasonable to expect baseball to provide a similar service. Sadly, with the death of Steve Bechler, the education of these players has already begun.

"It's not a question of whether 700 major-league players can be educated," Levinson says. "It whether 700 major-league players can be educated and then help educate the rest of the country."

It's been too easy this week to forget that baseball players are just a fraction of the real issue. The real issue is not how we can help baseball solve its problems, but how baseball can help all of us solve a problem we haven't been able to deal with adequately as a country, and as a society.

If that's the inspiration that Steve Bechler can provide, "then out of this tragedy," says Cindy Thomas, "we'll find a rainbow. ... I hope."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.