Should Steroids Be Banned In Major League Baseball?

Steroid use escalated during the 1990’s and continued to grow. What made it very obvious that players were using steroids was that their physical appearance drastically changed and

Steroids use at its prime during the late 80’s spanned from pitchers to big meathead clean up hitters. During the late 80’s early 90’s MLB saw a curiously high increase in Home Runs, especially in 1997, Roger Maris home run record was broken 2 time. “From 1998–2001, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa, hit sixty home runs a combined seven times”(NYC Local). This season long home run derby was actually beneficial to the game as popularity shot up and more fans started to show up to more games. This happened because people wanted to come and watch 450 foot moonshots, which is why MLB turned its back on the rumors, and yes they more the likely knew what was going on but when you're bringing in money and more fans than ever then why try to regulate

Athletes should be allowed to use steroids in sports, legally. Performance enhancing drug use is increasing muscle strength, body size, and the healing rate. It allows fans to see the maximum potential of the athletes. However (transitions) it is not fair to the athletes that don 't use steroids.

What are performance enhancing drugs? Performance enhancing drugs are substances such as steroids, monkey testosterone, federally banned alcohol, and etc. These drugs help you perform in an exceptional way when you are hurt, wanted to relax during a long season, or simply just perform better. A lot of “greats” such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriquez have all been linked to PEDS some time in their careers. When you find out about any athlete’s use of PEDS it makes you wonder have they been using them their entire career. Should any wins, they were involved in be voided? Should all athletes be tested for PEDS before each event? Those are all questions we should all think about.

Taking pills and injecting testosterone are popular ways that athletes use PEDs. The whole reason that athletes choose to take these drugs is because of the unfair advantages they gain. Athletes take these drugs knowing it will increase their athletic ability and decrease their rest time. Anyone that knowingly takes a drug that will increase their ability is not playing their sport the acceptable way, and obviously this glorified cheating should not be allowed. Evan Argintar, an orthopedic surgeon at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, had this to say about performance enhancing drugs. “Performance-enhancing drugs absolutely give athletes advantages in strength and endurance, which helps them both in the preparation for their sport as well as the actual implementation of the skills needed in many ways for the different sports.” (Argintar) Anything that can make an athlete better in an unfair way that can not be done by all athletes should not be allowed, especially something this harmful. Anything that is not worked for and earned should not be given in the form of a pill. This also lessens the actual wonder of an amazing athlete that is not doping, because due to the amount of people doping today we just tend to assume they are using something they should not be using to be that athletic or

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 years, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has haunted all levels of sport, baseball taking the majority of the publicity. Many have lost sight of the fact that baseball players are not the only athletes that face this life threatening addiction. Due to the amount of padding they have to wear, football players can easily disguise their size therefore keeping them from receiving scrutiny from the public. This has allowed more and more players to look to PEDs in order to gain an edge over their opponents. The issue spans to not only the professional level, but the high school and collegiate divisions as well. Because the National Football League sits on a higher platform, they bring in an exceptional amount of money compared to that

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) have been used in sports for many years. The common term for it is doping. It is one of the most important issues among professional athletes today. Doping should not be allowed in professional sports. The use of performance-enhancing drugs creates a disadvantage for the athletes that don't use PEDs since they will not perform as well as the athletes that used the drugs during the game or competition. Also, when drugs are used it takes the human effort away from sports where athletes have trained hard.

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.

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

As the game continues to evolve with the equipment, the game will as evolve with steroid usage. The desire to be the best player and hit home runs have ruined the concept of playing small ball. Androstenedione and anabolic steroids are both designed to increase muscle mass in the body, which relates to an increase in power. With the prevalence of suspensions that are handed out because of the use of steroids, players should give up steroids and use hard work to get to where they desire to be. With the increase in knowledge in the medical field about steroids, it may be possible to create a way to detect steroids during test. The technology could help make testing more advanced and could detect when there was an injection of steroids. Baseball is a great game but hopefully future baseball commissioners can implement a plan to lessen the steroid use to bring integrity back into

I found more research on Chittom, Lynn-nore and Ann Griswold. "Counterpoint: Performance Enhancing Drugs Should Be Banned." Points of View: Steroids,. This tells me why we should ban steroid use to people who are misusing them. The research also tells me that athletes are misusing steroids and that they should be banned. The reason why is too many athletes are getting arrested and dying from using too much steroids. I think they should get banned and the athletes should perform to their natural ability. I also think that the athletes would perform better without use of steroids. So therefore the research and I think that performance enhancing drugs and steroids should be banned.

Throughout all of Mark McGwire 's season he hit 70 home runs. This is about ten more than the great Babe Ruth hit. “I do not believe for a second he could have hit that many home runs without the use of drugs” (Tim). McGwire has said multiple times that no pills or injections could give someone the hand-eye coordination to hit a baseball as well as him. McGwire is right, pills or injections do not give you hand-eye coordination but, they do give you more power when you do hit the ball. However, from the year Mark admitted he started using his batting average increased by 11% and his on-base percentage of 19%. “Whether Mark McGwire used steroids simply for his injuries or for his injuries and to bat better, it still happened and statistics show that he gained power from the drugs” (Tim). Steroids, being the powerful drug it is, can cause multiple strengths and gains you may not even be noticed. It is possible that Mark seriously does believe that the steroids were only helping him heal and not become a better athlete, but for the ones who are sitting in the bleachers or behind a TV screen to see it more clearly. When you think back to all the times you sat in the bleachers and watched a great athlete grow to an amazing athlete, you may not want to see Mark McGwire as the amazing athlete you watched him grow. You may see that the credit now must go to the steroids, but steroids do not make up McGwire 's personality, hard-work, and dedication. Steroids built Mark McGwire’s playing abilities up to a new level, but the steroids do not make someone work as hard as

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.