Steroids
in Baseball
One
of the most controversial topics in the all of sports for the past two decades has
been the effect of steroids in baseball.
A whole era has basically been deemed as tainted, and great baseball
players are having all of their numbers voided because of alleged or proven
steroid use. The “Steroid Era” has been
filled with great players, but all of them are going to basically be shunned by
the hall of fame and become forgotten due to when they played the game. I am a huge baseball fan, and I am more
realistic than the average fan. I have
played baseball basically my whole life until college, and like to think that I
played at a pretty high level during high school. I have a different appreciation for Major
League Baseball players, and have a very strong opinion on how steroids are not
the problem in baseball. I am choosing
to talk about steroids in baseball because the media has blown everything out
of proportion, and convinced the general public that steroids make these
players as good as they are. Baseball is
America’s past time, but is losing all of its popularity and honor with all of
the steroid drama and suspensions. MLB
needs to start keeping the problems within their league and now release
elaborate press releases like they just caught Osama Bin Laden. I absolutely love the game of baseball and
everything about it, but I hate how political and media driven the sport has
become.
The
biggest obstacle I have to deal with while doing my podcast is that the
majority of people do not understand exactly how steroids work. Steroids will not make these guys super
human, or help their ability to play baseball.
Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and anybody else you can think of were
already elite athletes before their alleged steroid use. Most of the time, steroids are taken to help
a player stay healthy, or be able to endure such a long season. The baseball season is 162 games, in terrible
summer heat, and filled with travel and labor.
These players are expected to be able to go out and compete at a high
level, every day, and if they slide for two or three days, they are considered
to be slumping or losing it. Major
league baseball is not completely filled with steroids, not even 10% of the
players that were in the confidential study tested positive. The media has made it seem that every
baseball player from 1984-2010 were taking steroids, and that steroids are the
only reason these players have made it to the position they are in. The hardest part about convincing people
that steroids are not as big of an issue or aid is that people just do not know
enough about baseball because my generation has given up on the sport. Baseball’s popularity is slowly dying due to
the media and all of these scandals. The
image of baseball is being ruined by a select few individuals, and it is unfair
but nobody seems to be pointing it out.
The
research for this project was easy since I have been following all of it since
the Mitchell Report was released. I
have actually done many papers and projects on the subject at hand, and the MLB
needs to take a page out of the NFL’s book on how to handle substance abuse
problems. The NFL will just suspend a
player for substance abuse, and it is left at that. There is no extra information, not federal
investigation, or basically have their own little party showing they are trying
to clean the game up. Finding
information on steroids in baseball is easy because the MLB practically
discloses all of the information when a suspension is handed out. Everything is available for the public to
read, but sporting news sites such as ESPN and other sites will make it seem as
if the world is ending and baseball is a sport full of cheaters. ESPN has basically ruined how people perceive
Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, but embrace David Ortiz. David Ortiz had been linked to multiple
steroid allegations, but it is impossible for the media to make him out to be
the villain. Instead, they turned to his
teammate Manny Ramirez because he was an easy target. The baseball media seems to really stretch
for stories, and right now steroids are the hot topic so they will try and find
anything they possibly can about steroids and baseball to talk about. The best player in baseball right now is a 23-year-old
kid from New Jersey. He is the fastest
player, gold glover, and hit the longest homerun in the majors so far this
season. Not one person has come out and
accused him for steroids (yet), because he is media friendly and can become the
face of MLB. Mike Trout is expected to
dominate the game of baseball for the next 20 years, and take over the reign as
the face of the league since Derek Jeter is retiring. The worst part about the steroid era is that
some of the guys that are the most effected, have never tested positive in any
test, and have the worst reputation of all.
The media dictates who gets treated fairly or is the villain, and it all
depends on how nice you are to them.
Everybody knows that Barry Bonds hates the media, and the media hated
him, yet he hasn’t tested positive for steroids once in his life. Ryan Braun tested positive, multiple times,
but yet nobody really cares about it. It
is an unfair system filled with politics and needs to be changed. Hopefully Bud Selig’s successor can find a
way to get baseball out of the public eye.
Overall,
I love baseball enough to where I will still watch it everyday, but there are
so many things wrong with the game still.
The players taking steroids during the 90s and early 2000s should not be
hunted down. They beat the system; many
of these guys actually played college baseball and were stud athletes at their
universities. Baseball is struggling
right now with its image due to how the media is allowed to portray their
players and access information that should be kept internal. The hunting parties should be laid to rest,
and if a player tests positive during a test, go about it the proper way and
suspend them. Just because a player has
been linked to a pharmaceutical company doesn’t mean they will test positive
for steroids or banned substances. I am
a firm believer that if they pass all of their tests during the season, they
are clean, and shouldn’t be pursued any further. If the MLB wants to help their image and gain
popularity, stop having such large scandals brought to the public eye, and quit
searching so hard to find dirt on everybody.
It isn’t worth it, and it shows that a lot of these guys do not need
steroids to be successful. Nelson Cruz
was suspended last year for his role in Biogenesis, and is leading the AL in
home runs this year. Steroids are not as
big of a problem as they are perceived to be, and maybe baseball should focus
on the players that have chewing tobacco in their mouths at all times during
the game, and the fact that Tony Gwynn just died from throat cancer. That should be the bigger issue now than guys
that are just trying to play a few more games a year.
