Baseball and Steroids

Baseball is under attack by a force that runs rampant through every baseball clubhouse. It makes guys gain muscle, size, and speed, but it also has damaging effects that are hurting America’s pastime. Steroid use is a huge problem that needs to be fixed and the only way to do this is by testing players throughout the regular season. These drugs have become a staple of major league baseball and they need to be stopped.Studies show that over half of MLB athletes are using steroids. In Jose Conseco’s recent autobiography, he says that an estimated 85% of all ball players use them throughout the course of the season, which is an alarming number. One way to solve this problem is to make the MLB increase awareness to the public about steroids. Why would they want to do that? First, people pay to see players jack the ball 500 feet out of the park. In the early nineties, hitting fifty homeruns a year was a big deal, but now players are hitting them in the sixty and seventy range. In the early nineties players were averaging a body weight of 199 lbs but now players are bulking up to weights as big as 230 lbs plus. In the early nineties Barry Bonds weighed around 190 lbs, but these days he weighs around 230. He was once a slender leadoff hitter but is now a dominant force at the plate that has been linked to the Balco steroid scandal. The once smaller athletic ball player now looks like a house at the plate. If the league wanted to stop steroid use it could, but with ticket sales skyrocketing and with all the money involved that’s the last thing they want to do. Players claim that through years of hard work and dedication they achieve greatness, but nowadays it’s hard to believe what is real and what is not. With the recent admittance of steroid use by big leaguers Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds, who can tell what records are tainted and which are not. Don’t get me wrong, Bonds is a great player who has excellent skills on the diamond, but his home run shattering records and slugging percentages might as well have asterisks beside them. His records and accomplishments will forever be questioned. But the most important aspect of all this is how these superstars’ actions affect the youth of America. Whether you want to believe it or not young athletes look up to the Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire’s of this era. By players using and abusing steroids they are sending a bad image to our kids. The Steroid Encyclopedia located online states, that in the past ten years roid use among teens as increased 23%. Steroids hurt a teen’s body much more than that of an adult because their young bodies are still developing. If steroid use does not slow down among pro athletes then our kids will suffer. What we can do to make kids more aware of the dangers that come along with steroids, is educate them to make the right choices in improving their skills and health. More and more major league players are coming forward and admitting their use of steroids. Steroid use is not only openly talked about among players but it is also encouraged. A lot of players feel that if they don’t use them they won’t have that edge that the other guys have and could lose their jobs in the process. Steroid use can cause liver, heart and testicle damage as well as an increase in strokes, and aggressive behavior. But players don’t see these long term affects and only focus on their immediate improvement on the field.