Baseball Games Should Not Be Banned

In today’s society sports are extremely popular and followed by a countless number of fans. The level of competition has risen with the followers making many sports more aggressive. As a result athletes have taken to the use of performance enhancing drugs. The effect of these drugs have exponentially blown up the level of competition in sports. Some might say these drugs increase the performance quality of sports. Essentially making the sport more fun to watch because the playing field skill is at an extremely high competition level. However, performance enhancing drugs can pose huge health risk to athletes at the professional and recreational level, and professional athletes can influence children or other adults alike into thinking it is okay to use these drugs.

Background: Although people have been using steroids over 50 years, it wasn't until we started seeing headlines about athletes using steroids that it started receiving attention.

Baseball is known as America’s pastime and is one of the most popular, respected sports on earth. Since the beginning of the sport, it seemingly advances with technology every year making faster and stronger players. The use of steroids became rampant and spread among players and has carried them away from the true history of the game they play. Controversy still today runs around the sport today about fines, punishments and record breaking. The past two decades of Major League Baseball have been tainted because of the use of performance enhancing drugs, also known as steroids, causing the loss of many fans and the true meaning of America’s favorite sport.

“Commentators claim that performance-enhancing drugs are not right or wrong, simply another strategy to improve performance” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs). There are two main problems wrong with the use of drugs being legal. Health of athletes would drop devastatingly, and the true competition would become who gets lucky. “Some mourn the loss of yesterday's baseball heroes, while others argue that sport figures who use performance-enhancing drugs expose flaws in American culture” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing

The largest Performance Enhancing Drug scandal, in baseball, all started over a debt owed to Porter Fischer in 2013. Fischer worked for Tony Bosch who owned a clinic called Biogenesis of America, which specialized in weight loss and hormone replacement therapy. When Bosch did not pay back his debt to Fischer, Fischer became angry and wanted revenge. This is when Porter stole documents from Tony to get his revenge by letting the world know who “Dr. Tony Bosch,” is what he called himself even though he wasn’t a real doctor, really was doing at this so called “clinic”. In the documents that had all the client names there were twenty Major League ballplayers that MLB ended up linking to the clinic, but only one stood out to Fischer: Alex Rodriguez. This was an eye opener for Major League Baseball and they knew something needed to be done about the use of PEDs in the sport of baseball.

Baseball has always been known as “America’s Favorite Pastime”. Over the past decade, the game America knows and loves has been exposed as a game full of cheaters. Major League Baseball(MLB) has had over one hundred players test positive for performance-enhancing substances over the past fifteen years. Performance-enhancing substances increase a player’s ability to produce better stats to help his salary. The past fifteen years of baseball have contained dirty play by some of the best players to ever play the sport. Kids all over America look at these athletes as role models. The money hungry players proceed to send a terrible message to fans of the game by taking drugs to succeed. After commissioner Bud Selig cracked down

Culture can arguable be the thing that is impacted the most from the use of performance-enhancing drugs. People in the everyday society look to the countries greatest pasttime for inspiration and an escape from their everyday life. “Few sports-related events have garnered as much interest and as much cynicism as the steroid scandal in baseball.” (Ringeret al 91) It’s damage crushed the spirit of many individuals, “[b]oth ardent fans and casual observers wonder why proffessional baseball players would choose to use such substances when their use is viewed as outside the bounds of fair play.” (Ringeret al 91) There may not be a true reasoning, unflawed, as to why PED’s were thought acceptable to players, but research shows that values and norms in the culture of competitive sports often differ from commonly held social norms about what is fair and what is not.

A person can take a good athlete, one who works hard training and conditioning and turn them into a great one with the use of anabolic steroids. Someone may ask how? In physical sports, the stronger, faster, and more endurance, the better of an advantage they have over the other person. A good example of this is in baseball. Take men like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa, all were men in baseball who could absolutely crush a baseball and all used steroids. In 1998, Mark McGwire, broke the record for most home runs in a single season, and he later admitted to using anabolic steroids when he broke the record. In an interview, he quoted “I wish I never played during the steroid era” this shows just how remorseful of the advantages he had from the steroids. The performance advantages that come with steroids also can come with financial advantages. With amazing performances by an athlete, they will be more sought after by other teams, and therefore, have a better chance of earning more money when contracts are proposed to them. Since they use steroids and perform at a higher skill level, they have a better chance of making more money compared to someone who does not. Alex Rodriguez signed a ten year contract with the New York Yankees for 275 million dollars. This made him the highest paid baseball player in history, and one of the highest paid athletes in the world. Then in 2014, he admitted to using steroids, while given immunity in a court of law, to confess who he purchased the drugs. For years, he used steroids to dominate in baseball, and establish his greatness as a player to earn a large contract before he was

Moving on to the team aspect of baseball, one can imply the old saying, “guilty by association.” The media and the general public, typically view the teammates of the steroid user as someone who also uses steroids, until proven otherwise. A professional baseball team gets recognized for winning and reaching out to the community, but steroids can bring an umbrella of suspension to the entire team. This point is proven in Jose Conseco’s autobiography when he admitted he “implicated that ten of his former teammates including his brother as steroid users” (Roberts 1). Not only does the player’s steroid use affect his immediate team players, but it also casts additional suspension to the entire Major League Baseball as a whole. When a player is exceeding his normal performance level, the general public immediately suspects steroid use based on previous players who have been linked or proven to be steroid users. Major League Baseball players understand the penalty, if linked to steroids, can have on the player or the team in general. The general public is very harsh about steroid use; many feel that steroid use affects baseball in too many ways negatively.

Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and Lance Armstrong are all athletes that have even been accused of or admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. Many associate the word Performance Enhancing Drugs or steroids to athletes, which is actually a common misconception. PEDs are substances that are used to improve any form of activity performance in humans and since 776 B.C.E, people have been taking them. The Greeks first used them in the Olympic games to gain an advantage over the other professionals competing. Around 100 A.D., Roman Gladiators also used stimulants to prevent fatigue and improve the fight’s intensity. The act of taking these drugs really started in 1904 when every Olympic team developed their own formula, which mainly consisted

In the days when steroids were only being used by body builders and professional wrestlers, stories about performance enhancing drugs could only be found on the back pages of the newspapers. When former Oakland Raiders All-Pro Lyle Alzado admitted to steroid use in a 1991 Sports Illustrated article the whispers about what professional athletes were using steroids began to get louder. (Puma, 2005) Finally, in 2002, when Caminiti, a former MVP, came clean, two things were clear; athletes in all sports were using these drugs, and that they worked. The fact that steroid use had permeated our national pastime combined with the media explosion of the internet and 24 hour a day sports talk created a perfect storm which created the biggest sports story of the new millennium so far. However, two other facts remained clear, performance enhancing drugs were old news, and athletes in all sports from all over the world had been using them for years.

Why are performance enhancement drugs use in professional sports? The use of steroids has been a major problem among sports and has caused lots of controversy. Although these professional sports organizations such as the NFL, NHL, NBA and several others have spent time and money investigating athletes for uses of performance enhancement drugs, nothing has been done to erase records or record breaking statistics. In order to cease steroid and other performance enhancement drug users from cheating there need to be more involvement of severe punishments and stripping away all records, awards, and statistics. During my composition review I learned a great deal of information that I previously was unaware of. Period, the use of steroids in professional sports has ruined the game for avid sports fans, and competing players.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) have been only in displays. Story shows that given that the premature 1900s, Olympic runners have been mixing their very own recipes they really assumed will strengthen the jogging efficiency. Perhaps a near-lethal blend during brandy and strychnine was first useful for an Olympic marathon runner inside 1904. By way of 1928 the Global Association of all Athletics Federation expanded the first overseas wearing federation and energy to reduce doping as of athletes; that is the regulating bloodstream for tune and area. Nevertheless, inside 1958, the FDA approved the initially anabolic cortisone for sales in the United States, and that transformed the dial over activities for life. Whilst official drug testing in the Olympic Games began inside 1968, an effective test for anabolic steroids wasn't designed until 1975, and the product was instantly included with the prohibited ingredients listing. Many forbidden materials were only pertinent onto Olympic players, inside 1990 Congress passed the Anabolic Steroids Property React, adding this product in the same legal party as amphetamines, methamphetamine, opium and morphine. The future year Key Category Soccer prohibited steroids. The MLB commissioner whilst in that time has got mentioned he forbidden steroids mainly on account of the reports over Jose Canseco's usage of the material, even though he didn't actually realize something about steroids through the the evening. Within 1997, the

Is it time to say yes to Steroids in professional sports or keep them out? One of the two articles that I chose to use for this paper is, “Is It Time to Say Yes to Steroid in Professional Sports?” written by Raymmar Tirado (2014) of the Huff Sports Division. The second article is, “Why Steroids Have No Place in Sports” written by April Ashley (2010) from Marquette University Law School. These articles pose two different points of view when it comes down to the use of all Performance Enhancing Drugs in Professional Sports.

Many people believe that drug use in professional athletics is not a serious problem, however it is more widespread and serious than people think. In professional athletics the use of drugs is looked upon as somewhat of a serious problem, but is also very discrete and low key. Every once in a while one might see a prominent figure in a certain sport being reprimanded for the use of some outlawed drug, however this is just one of the many who happened to get caught. Athletes today seem to find no moral problem with using performance-enhancing drugs, or in other words cheating. Also many of them feel that because they are "stars" there should be no repercussions for their illegal activity.