Drugs have destroyed the integrity of the game

Up until a few years ago, steroids were not banned by Major League Baseball. Consequently, a lot of professional baseball players were using these substances to get an edge on their competition.
And who could blame them? What with the increased demands of fans and owners to produce and win, who wouldn’t take any advantage he could get in order to keep his job?
Here’s a clue: Work harder, not just smarter.
There’s a place for cutting corners, but not where integrity or quality count. Any professional athlete, in any sport, who uses performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), whether banned or not, is cheating. Bottom line.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines cheating as influencing or leading by deceit, trickery or artifice. Those who take PEDs do so in an attempt to influence their performance on the field via artificial means.
What’s more, not one of these athletes ever openly and proudly admitted to using PEDs before such were banned. If using PEDs was no big deal prior to the ban, then why didn’t athletes come out and defend their use? The reason is because they all knew that doing so was unethical, even if it wasn’t against company rules.
There is an unwritten code of conduct all athletes learn to abide by once they enter competition as youngsters. Chief among an athlete’s professional ethics is to work hard, work honestly and win cleanly. Those who use PEDs violate all three of these unwritten, but oft-spoken and regularly practiced tenets. By taking drugs, athletes are being honest neither with themselves nor others; they begin to think that they don’t have to work as hard to succeed; and they are anything but clean.
Furthermore, staying clean from drugs is a matter of personal ethics not to undermine the honest efforts of other athletes who have either come before and established the standards of integrity upon which sport and competition were built, or who currently uphold those standards. When an athlete chooses to take PEDs for his own personal gain, he spits in the face of all honest athletes who have chosen to achieve success the old fashioned way: by earning it.
Those who use PEDs are essentially trying to purchase success.
I can only wonder, now, whether or not Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, among others, really earned the accolades that have put them at the front of the line to enter the baseball hall of fame—most members of which were enshrined not by cheating, but by having earned their spots honestly through hard work. All of the aforementioned baseball stars and so-called legends have either admitted to using, are being investigated for using, or have been under suspicion of using PEDs.
Both McGuire and Sosa smashed Roger Maris’ single-season home-run record during that memorable and admittedly exciting 1998 season. Prior to that year, Sosa wasn’t even on the radar screen and McGuire had yet to crack 60 dingers in a season. Looking at Big Mac’s home run marks before 1998, you can see a gradual gain in round-trippers that culminated with the single-season record of 70—an obscene nine home runs beyond what Maris had achieved three decades earlier. In the game of baseball, there are a lot of hills and valleys. To have the kind of growing numbers that Big Mac did in the seasons leading up to 1998 should have raised a few eyebrows.
A look at Sosa reveals numbers that swelled following the 1998 season. The guy just kept belting out 50+ home-run seasons after his big debut alongside Big Mac. In fact, he was still in the 60-homer range a whole three seasons after 1998. Again, where were the eyebrows?
But perhaps the most telling tale of PEDs comes from newly anointed home-run king, Barry Bonds, who in 2007 snatched the crown from legendary slugger Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron, who had held the title for 33 years.
I am aware of the old sports axiom that records are meant to be broken. But they aren’t meant to be stolen. That’s, in effect, what Barry Bonds did when he smacked his 716th home run last year.
Bonds, it turns out, committed perjury before a grand jury, lying about his use of steroids. So now, he’s a cheat and a liar. What a wonderful role model to have sitting atop the baseball world, holding its most prestigious record like some sort of royal scepter.
The road Bonds has followed from ordinary player to superstar is one marred by steroids use. You can see the physical transformation that took place on his journey from slender outfielder to heavy-set slugger. Just look at his baseball cards from a decade ago to 2003, when Bonds broke the single-season home run record once held by Big Mac, another PED user. The weight gain was so pronounced and obvious that either he was becoming a voracious eater, or his hormone levels were severely elevated. With his age at the time, it was highly unlikely that he gained that bulk from lifting weights. Past his prime and having become something of a has-been, Bonds would have had to pump three times as much iron as his younger counterparts to add the amount of bulk that he did in such a short amount of time.
His guilt is evident.
So is that of Big Mac, Sosa, and all the other professional athletes linked to PEDs, regardless of whether or not they have openly admitted to using steroids. Their success in such relatively short amounts of time is the big clue. Factor in sudden increases in muscle bulk and weight gain, along with almost immediate results on the field, and you’ve got a formula for steroid use. It isn’t difficult to put two-and-two together and come up with four. Bigger muscles plus bigger numbers minus short duration equals PEDs.
What upsets me most about the whole steroid issue is not so much the use as the acceptance of drugs as part of the sports culture these days.
I can put up with the fact that drugs exist in sports the way they exist in society. They are there, some people use them, and not all users get caught. What I refuse to tolerate is the notion that drugs are just part of the games we play. We should just embrace them as alternative means for improving performance to old-fashioned methods, such as weight-lifting.
Well, excuse me for having practiced the old-fashioned methods of working hard, being honest, believing in myself, playing by the rules and doing what’s right. I may not have made it to the big leagues, but at least I can retire with a clear conscience.
That’s more than today’s high-priced, professional steroid users can say for themselves.