The Role Of Performance Enhancing Drugs In Sports

Mark McGwire, a home run hitting machine, was on the verge of being elected into the Hall of Fame. Mark McGwire had the third best record of home runs in a season(70 home runs). Mark McGwire “had hit 50 or more home runs four seasons in a row from 1996 to 1999” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs: At Issue). Mark McGwire was on his way to become one of baseballs best hitters. When being nominated in “ 2007, American sportswriters did not elect McGwire to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He received only 128 of the 545 votes cast. Many speculate that sports writers failed to select McGwire due to his connection with baseball's steroid scandal” (Introduction to Performance-Enhancing Drugs: At Issue). All because of being associated with the use of steroids and the steroid scandal, Mark McGwire lost all hope of being elected into the Hall of Fame. Many other athletes have suffered from the same problems. Even though these penalties seem harsh there are still many athletes getting away with drug use. Testing and punishments should be stricter, harsher, and more consistent.

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.

Chris Cochrane sports Columnist for the “Chronicle Herald” stated in his article titled “Keep Them Out of Baseball’s Hall of Fame” that “The one weapon the baseball world retains to punish the star offenders is to bar them from its Hall of Fame. For selfishness and arrogance on this large a scale, that’s a justifiable punishment." Chris talks about here that there really isn’t another way to punish these men besides not letting them into the Hall of Fame. There is the usual suspension that anybody can get, but a lot of times people usually find out after the player is retired so the suspension does not good. When a player takes some of the banned substances he is just being selfish and making himself better without even training that much. Many of these players denied the fact that they took substances especially steroids for year, and then later admit to it. Yet, many of these players get suspensions, shouldn’t that be enough? However players get suspensions for anything, even something small. These players can ruin the game, they deserve more than just a suspension. Overall, these players need a rightful punishment for their actions and banning them from the Hall of Fame is that

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.

           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.

To what extent has punishment in Major League Baseball since the Chicago Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series? This investigation was done through numerous baseball reference websites, with ESPN being the primary source for the more current scandals such as Biogenesis. This investigation will assess how punishment in Major League Baseball has evolved since the World Series gambling scandal of 1919. This investigation will explore major cheating and gambling scandals in the history of Major League Baseball with a majority of the focus on the World Series scandal of 1919, the BALCO scandal, The Pete Rose scandal, and the Biogenesis scandal, and Major League Baseball’s response to each of the scandals. Major League Baseball has adopted a zero tolerance policy for gambling since the 1919 World Series, and the drug policy has four levels, starting with a fifty game suspension for the first offense, and eventually leading to a lifetime ban from Major League baseball. The adoption of strict punishments speak volumes of the administration of Major League Baseball, and their dedication to keeping the sport enjoyable for athletes and spectators, as well as protecting the integrity of the game as a whole.

     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 has always been known as “America’s Favorite Pastime”. Over the past decade, the game America knows and loves has been exposed as a game full of cheaters. Major League Baseball(MLB) has had over one hundred players test positive for performance-enhancing substances over the past fifteen years. Performance-enhancing substances increase a player’s ability to produce better stats to help his salary. The past fifteen years of baseball have contained dirty play by some of the best players to ever play the sport. Kids all over America look at these athletes as role models. The money hungry players proceed to send a terrible message to fans of the game by taking drugs to succeed. After commissioner Bud Selig cracked down

However the spotlight that steroids find themselves in are in professional sports, mainly Major League Baseball. Steroids have been an on-going issue with Major League Baseball. The MLB has been tainted in one way or another since the game began. However, now the game has been tainted with drugs that are giving some players an advantage over others. These players are also taking risks with drugs because they are constantly trying to attain a drug that does not get detected when they get drug tests. The MLB should outsource their drug testing policies to an independent organization like the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest between players and the MLB. In 1994-95, the MLB suffered a strike that resulted in the cancellation of the post season. Afterwards, fans were deterred from the sport. So in 1998,

Many people believe that drug use in professional athletics is not a serious problem, however it is more widespread and serious than people think. In professional athletics the use of drugs is looked upon as somewhat of a serious problem, but is also very discrete and low key. Every once in a while one might see a prominent figure in a certain sport being reprimanded for the use of some outlawed drug, however this is just one of the many who happened to get caught. Athletes today seem to find no moral problem with using performance-enhancing drugs, or in other words cheating. Also many of them feel that because they are "stars" there should be no repercussions for their illegal activity.

Every athlete has wished they could jump a little higher, swim a little longer and run a little faster. Throughout the history of sport there have been accounts of chemical enhancements taken by athletes to give them this advantage. This has developed more as time has taken its grasp on modern medicinal practices. People try to obey the laws of a pure sport, yet there seems to be an increasing margin of those who “dope” and get away with it and the small group those that does not, how does this still happen? Is the solution to just allow doping? While with so much speculation and ethically derivative rhetoric to be examined, doping to increase strength in a sport is explicitly wrong to the sport itself. Chemical enhancements discredit the integrity

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

Some of the greatest athletes in the history of sports are Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGuire. One thing they had in common was that they all were Kings of hitting home runs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Another thing they all had in common, they illegally took performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) during their careers in Major League Baseball. They have been labeled as having a high lack of sportsmanship, being a poor role model for children, and cheaters, which are a couple of reasons why none of these players have been elected into the hall of fame. There have been experiments and studies that have proved that the use of PEDs affects both the physical and psychological parts of the human body. This is why athletes should be banned

The sport that has gotten the most attention on the subject of steroids is Major League Baseball. Due to the suspected prevalence of them from the late 80’s up until the present day, the so-called baseball purists now question all the records and achievements

"Sports will either be a school of virtue or a school of vice, and that 's why the epidemic of cheating in professional sports is, and ought to be, a huge cultural concern” (Landry, 2012, para. 1). Professional sports are littered with cheating scandals and as technology advances so will access to new and clever techniques. There are many ways to cheat in sports, such as fixing games, placing bets on teams, lying about your age, and the biggest one of them all, taking performance enhancing substances. Doping is a matter of great public concern, and equally as concerning, is doping procedures that go undetected because they have been manipulated to slip under the radar.