Performance Enhancing Drugs In Baseball

Steroids are a hot topic of debate and controversy in the world of athletes and sports. Steroids fall under the umbrella of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and are a dark cloud that have been hovering over the sports world for a long time. In the world today, steroids are the most relevant in major league baseball. Many baseball players, such as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, and Mark McGwire, just to name a few, have ruined their reputations because of steroids. There are repercussions for PED use in major league baseball, which have cut down on the substance abuse by players but have nowhere near eliminated the problem.

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.

           Today in the United States, millions and millions of kids, teens, and adults watch and play in the sport of baseball. It is probably the number one sport looked upon and what is happening to it is a bit discouraging. Players have started “cheating” by using steroids to help them play stronger and better. They are in league where you have to be the best at what you do to play, and if your using drugs to cheat your way in, then it ruins the ethics of the game of baseball.

Anabolic steroids have been abused by Major League Baseball players for years, it’s time to forever ban the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs before they ruin America’s past time. Why should athletes be able to cheat when teammates or rivals are competing with honest effort? Every year records are broken and new heights are achieved, the game of baseball is very simple yet very humble, and to deceive the game you love, forever will you be punished. Let me inform you with the origin in which PEDs were first used and where they came from, regulation, and a possible solution.

“The Steroids Era” refers to a period of time in Major League Baseball when a number of players were believed to have used performance enhancing drugs, resulting in increased offensive output throughout the game. During the 1990’s, Major League Baseball experience an increase in

The abuse of steroids among players in Major League Baseball is corrupting the image of America's Pastime as well as endangering the health of those who use the illegal substances. The lack of testing and punishment for the use of illegal substances like steroids in the Major Leagues portrays a negative image to aspiring young athletes. They see their role models using steroids and becoming better athletes rather than seeing suspensions for the illegal behavior or the negative health effects.

Baseball is America’s national pastime, but it has still faced controversy. Major League Baseball and its players have faced one huge problem, steroids. Performance enhancing drugs such as testosterone, human growth hormone, and androstenedione are all factors of the horrible period in baseball known as the “Steroid Era”. Almost all of the home run leaders, prime pitchers, and many all-stars at the time had one thing in common; they all used steroids. This still is a problem and Major League Baseball and its officials need to be stricter and tighten drug tests, and ban steroids for good.

Because steroids were not deemed illegal in baseball until 2005, players like Clemens and Bonds felt like they were not breaking any rules or regulations. Although they may not have broken MLB rules, they broke the spirits of baseball fans all over the country. Over the past fifteen years, the players have thrown their morals away at the first sight of a $. Without thinking about the kids who one day want to slug seventy homers in a season, major league players have set an example by saying “Well, I guess it’s ok to cheat to be rich and famous.” Millions of little leaguers all over the world look up to these athletes. Look at the message that is being sent to the kids when their role model is injecting steroids just to be good at a game, how far must it go? Steroids are not only unfair to the fans of the game, but also the other players in the league. It is not fair to the players who play the game fair currently or to the retired players whose reputations are comparable to those of the players who took shortcuts to succeed. The fair players should not be referred to as “Pretty good for not taking steroids” to label their caliber. Steroids have ruined the credibility of many great talents in the game of baseball and need to be eliminated.

Since the 1990’s, Major League Baseball has been tainted by the “steroid era,” with over 127 players admitting to or being charged for performance-enhancing drug usage. As records have been shattered, books have been published, and players have confessed to their exploits, these drugs have made society question the legitimacy of America’s favorite pastime. One of the game’s greatest, Hank Aaron, set the all time homerun record in 1974. Thirty-three years later, Barry Bonds tied this record, and shortly after was indicted for lying under oath about his alleged use of steroids in the BALCO scandal. An example of two monumental milestones, both affected by the use of illegal

The most commonly discussed issue in sports of the 21st century is the use of performance enhancing drugs by professional athletes. Over the past four years, it has been nearly impossible to turn on the television without hearing something about athletes and these drugs. From former National League MVP Third Baseman Ken Caminiti's admission of steroid use in an issue of Sports Illustrated (Verducci, 2004) to 2006 Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis being stripped of title due to a failed doping test (Blue, 2006) virtually every sport is involved. Are performance enhancing drugs a substance that threatens the very existence of professional sports, or are they the future? Perhaps the issue

Professional sports are a competition between the greatest athletes in the world. And when I go to a game, that’s exactly what I expect to see. Sports are entertainment. There is no room for purity and respecting the limits that athletes had in the past. Modern athletes should utilize all the resources that they have available to them. This includes steroids, which enhance an athlete’s performance. After all, performance is what really matters.

Long throughout mankind’s history there have been sports that have pushed men and women to do incredible accomplishments. These sports have always been thought of as an extremely and entertaining competitive activity as well as a celebration of human capabilities. However, with these sports there have always been things that worked to degrade the integrity of them. Some of these things include unsportsmanlike conduct, unfair rules or regulations, and in the last decade or so, cheating through the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Among these detrimental aspects in sports, PEDs are potentially the worst. These drugs offer up the risk of potentially endangering those athletes that use these drugs as well as put other athletes that do

There are many different kinds of performance enhancing drugs used in all different types of sports and levels of sports. These drugs range from making the athletes more muscular to giving them more energy. Athletes choose to use these drugs to make them an overall better player. However, many performance enhancing drugs are illegal and are considered cheating if used. Cocaine is a widely-used drug that many athletes use to gain a “rush” during their games/performances. It is considered an illegal drug made out of leaves from a cocoa plant derived from South America (NIDA 2016).

Performance enhancing drugs improve the performance of athletes in sports and/or in the weight room. The wise man Knute Rockne once said, “win or lose, do it fairly.” (Rockne). This quote has a lot of meaning when it comes to sports in the world today. These drugs are an enhancement to muscle growth and energy. Performance-enhancing therapy and drugs have three major negative effects on athletes, which involve cheating, damaging bodies, and bothering others without this advantage.

In New Zealand, this year the laws surrounding drugs in sport have been updated so that they are now at the same standard of those of the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2015 world anti-doping code. This meant increasing the penalty of those caught using performance enhancing drugs from a 2 year ban to 4 years for first time offenders. This means that an athlete that is caught using drugs at the Olympics, they will miss the next one. The laws have also been changed so that all supporting staff/team members of the athlete are subject to these laws as well and therefore they can receive banes as well. They also extended the consequences to anyone who tries to cover up any doping that is occurring. These law changes were set in place to