Mark Mgwire Research Paper

From being a below average hitter to an extraordinary hitter over years in the majors is nothing new to baseball but extraordinary doesn’t even come close to explaining how good of a batter Mark McGwire became after 10 years in the majors. Just to give a little look at how good of a hitter he had become, his first year he had three home runs with a .189 batting average and by his tenth year he had 52 home runs with .312 batting average. That doesn’t even fully explain the extent of McGwire 's hitting. In 1998 he broke the record for most homeruns in a single season, previously held by Roger Maris with 61, with 70. He profoundly made his mark in Mlb history.

Commonly known as juice, roids, and gym candy, anabolic steroids or PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) are illegally used for unfair advantages by many players in Major League Baseball. Since the 1930’s, steroids have been available for use. Anabolic steroids are a synthetic type of male hormone, testosterone, that are used in combination with a workout. Also similar to steroids are human growth hormones commonly known as HGH. Both anabolic steroids and HGH help contribute to endurance during a hard workout, greater muscle mass and strength, and quicker recovery.

In 1889, Bud Galvin became the first man to use steroids in american sports when he tried to inject hormones from animals into himself. “Charles Brown-Sequard's "Elixir of Life," which became the earliest known performance enhancing drug in American professional sports when Pud Galvin of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys used it in 1889” (VICE). Since then steroids have been a staple in american sports, especially the game of baseball. When people think of the best player in baseball many people will say without even thinking about, Babe Ruth, the great yankee slugger who hit close to 720 homeruns in what people will call the dead ball era. Babe Ruth, however may have been using some sort of performance enhancing drug when he was still playing with

“Before steroids, records were made to be broken. Now they’re stolen,” is a quote that many know. The number of athletes who use steroids is staggering. First of all, the health effects could create huge problems for the athletes. Next, the consequences for using steroids are huge. Lastly (transition), many athletes that use steroids are better than their opponents, by cheating. Athletes that use steroids should have bigger consequences.

Dean Smith, author of “The Black Sox Scandal”, highlights the biggest scandal in the baseball world. Smith introduces his article with Jim Crusinberry, a sports journalist, who arrived at the Sinton Hotel, Cincinnati for the World Series on September 30, 1919. Smith writes how Crusinberry noticed Abe Attell, former world featherweight boxing champion, screaming his throat out with a handful of money and offering to bet on Cincinnati Reds to beat the Chicago White Sox in the opening match. This behavior of Attell was twitching for Crusinberry, as to why he was betting against the greatest and finest team, Chicago White Sox, in the free-wheeling days of Americans gamblers.

Fans go to games to watch superhuman athletes play, not average ones. McGwire and Sosa generated so much fanfare because they did the impossible. Only years later, Barry Bonds astounded fas around the world, as he broke McGwire’s record. As the great Vince Lombardi once said “Defense wins games, offense sells tickets.” With the absence of steroids, pitchers are taking over the game; by using steroids a player is able to reach his full potential. Dr. LIncoln Allison argues that in truth, steroids are not really “cheating”, they are just a way to bring out the full ability from a player. “A sportsman or woman who seeks an advantage from drugs just moves up to the level appropriate to his or her underlying ability”(107). She suggests that we deal with other, much greater problems, before worrying about teroid issue, ”In general, the risk to health from performance-enhancing drugs is considerably less than that from tobacco or alcohol, and we ought not to apply paternalistic moral assumptions to sport that we are not prepared to apply to the rest of

Steroids should only be used for medical reasons and not for better performance. I cannot seem to understand why athletes would take any kind of drug without medical advice or take any drug with so many hazardous side effects. There are reasons why people do what they do, but after researching performance enhancing drugs, I would not think of any reason to use such a drug with so many ill side effects. In my opinion, if you do not have the natural ability and have to rely on a performance-enhancing type of drug, you should not be playing. Drug testing would be the best idea, but it is still not 100% on results quite yet. Hopefully soon they will get drug test that will be able to pick up all types of performance-enhancing drugs. Steroids will continue to be a big issue in the sports industry. These types of drugs should not be allowed because it gives the player a greater advantage over other players who are playing with their natural ability. Many players will take steroids to help them play better. This issue could be solved if steroids were not so easy to get ahold of. As a final point, steroids will continue to be an issue in baseball until someone decides to step up and stop

For two straight years and possibly even longer, Alex Rodriguez spent over $12,000 a month for performance enhancing drugs (PED) to gain an unfair advantage over his competitors (Weaver). Professional athletes like him are subject to huge contracts and an incredible amount of pressure to perform at a high level. As a result of this, many resort to steroids as a training aid. It is difficult to keep regulations on steroids in different sports leagues. Some steroids can be undetectable in drug testing and some leagues simply do not have strict enough rules on steroid use. This is extremely unfair to players that work unquestionably hard to be a professional athlete while some athletes are cheating through the use of steroids. It also destroys the integrity of the sport because awards, records, and championships seem to be fallacious.

Alex Rodriguez used steroids as an early as highschool, and continued to used HGH even when he joined the Yankees. HGH (Human Growth Hormones) cause nerve, muscle,

Barry Bonds has the most home runs by any Major League Baseball player in history with 762 home run. He surpassed legends of the game like Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. Barry Bonds went to Arizona State university for college. He was drafted in 1985 by the Pittsburgh Pirates and started his career in 1986. In 1993 he signed with the San Francisco Giants and finished his career there in 2007. Barry Bonds was a great hitter, he hit a lot of home runs. In 2003 Barry Bonds had to go to court for being a consultant with the BALCO organization. He was one of many athletes that got caught up in the doping scandal associated with BALCO.

About the same time that I met Bonnie I was also introduced to an element of major league baseball of which I had heard of, but knew very little about. It became part of the professional game long before I arrived and became more widespread over the course of my career. I am referring to the use of "greenies," tiny green pills, which were the popular PED (performance enhancing drug) of the time. Commonly known as speed or amphetamines, this drug was given to military personnel during World War II to help them work efficiently and stay alert. However, they later showed up in baseball clubhouses and were taken by players to sharpen reflexes and boost energy levels. There were ballplayers who claimed that greenies were good for everything from

In “Cheating and CHEATING” by Joe Posnanski, he is responding to Pete Hamill and arguing against him, unlike Moller’s article that is a personal experience. Posnanski tells facts on cheating in the baseball games such as “Leo Durocher and the Giants, who rigged an elaborate sign stealing system”(556).He mentions drugs and tells just what he’s read about which is the good and the bad side of them. His article is centered on Willie Mays as it should be as a response with him being the focus. Moller on the other hand, author of “We, the Public, Place the Best Athletes on Pedestals” had actually taken Ritalin a handful of times to study with and personally felt the effects kick in “hypersensitized, stuffed-up, sweaty, wide-eyed mess, but I studied until I heard the birds chirping. And I aced my test” (Moller, 545).He sees personally the pull of drugs to perform better in scholarly work for himself and understands personally why the baseball player’s would do the same. The down side and health effects almost seemed to not matter when one is doing so well in their career or life. He talks about different types of performance enhancing drugs that he or his friend used and why they are prescribed. Moller says there is Ritalin, its effects already mentioned above, steroids which Alex used as well as not just a drug and just to get ahead “resin on his baseball “ that hides substances that effect the movement of the ball(Moller,550).There are other drugs too that he mentions from pro athletes such as Adderall and andro. He also shares that “after Ritalin was outlawed in MLB, the number of baseball players being diagnosed with ADD jumped

Eight baseball players made a decision that ruined their lives. Eddie Cicotte, Claude Williams, Arnold Gandil, Charles Risberg, George Weaver, Joe Jackson, Oscar Felsch, and Fred McMullin called home after an evening of confessing. Did confessing lead to more years of imprisonment and fines or did it bring nothing to their plate to overcome. Black Sox baseball scandal is a malicious disaster for the teammates involved because of all the cheating during the game, how the gambling went down, and all the investigating.

Playing baseball for New York 's top team is every young player 's ultimate dream.

Alex Rodriguez has been receiving a lot of attention he has been known for his skills on the ball field but recently got caught using steroids.Alex Rodriguez became a home run champ and a three-time MVP during his years with the Texas Rangers New York Yankees until he was suspended for the entire 2014 season for using performance-enhancing drugs.This research will analyze why athletes dope in sports and how it negatively affects the athlete 's health.