Steroids in Sports: Baseball

By Curtis Stoychoff

One sport comes to mind right away when anyone talks about steroids. That sport is baseball. The point of sports is for evenly matched competitors to compete against each other without having an unfair advantage of any kind. That’s what Major League Baseball had in mind when they started back in 1875. So why, do athletes today think it is okay to seek or even achieve that unfair advantage. How are they doing this? The answer is through steroids.
Are steroids illegal to use in the MLB? Yes. Does this or has this stopped players from using them? Absolutely not. The proof behind this lies clearly in the record books. Mark McGwire set the records for most home runs in a season in 1998 with 70 home runs. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats1.shtml It later came to be known that he had used steroids for a period of eight years during his career, perhaps even longer. Now people debate whether or not he should even be allowed to be mentioned as someone who held the record. Now when you search McGwire’s name on Google, in the “People also searched for” section, names of athletes like Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, and Roger Clemens all come up. All of which, have been associated with the use of steroids themselves. Is it fair that McGwire is categorized as a “steroids user”? The answer is simple enough:
Should the use of steroids be considered a crime though? If everyone is doing it, why is it still considered an unfair advantage? You’ll get those people who argue that not everyone in the MLB does steroids, which is true of course. (For all that we know.) But clearly, a lot of players do. It seems like a new name comes out every day. Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, where will it stop? Or will it ever stop? The fact of the matter is that the sport is changing, if it hasn’t already changed completely. Maybe we need to learn to accept it.
Without the use of steroids, we might not have all the amazing home run records that we have. Would this make the game less exciting? Probably. But at least the integrity of the game our forefathers played back in 1875 would still be intact. I’m pretty sure that this guy
Ted Williams
wouldn’t be too proud to share the brotherhood that MLB players have with each other, with this guy.Barry Bonds