Steroids in Baseball Essay

Connor Merritt

10/17/12

Professor Cary

News Narrative Essay

Baseball has been around since the 1700’s and is one of America’s pastime sports. Many people would say that baseball is one of the hardest sports to learn and play. I would also agree with that. Being able to play baseball in the Major League is a big success. Anyone who makes it that far deserves the money. Some who make it that far or already in the league don’t deserve to be there because of cheating.  Taking banned substances such as steroids is a huge problem in Major League Baseball. Many players have gotten caught and some are still lucky they haven’t. Taking steroids is a worry in baseball because it’s harmful to health, can removes accomplishments, and ruins the reputation of a baseball player.

According to WebMD, steroids cause impotence, infertility, and testicle shrinkage, all long term side effects that greatly outweigh rapid muscle growth. Even worse, it increases the chance of developing liver cancer and heart attacks. In a segment on a local news program, Dr. Tom Hopkins mentioned that the sudden muscle augmentation does not only affect the areas of the body that add power to the swing of a bat; in fact, the heart is enlarged as well. Diminishing manhood is almost trivial compared to these more lethal side effects. It is easy to say that the risk is hardly worth the reward.

When taking performance enhancing drugs, it can ruin a baseball player's reputation in the game. Alex Rodriguez, as of right now, is probably one of the highest paid players in baseball. I saw that this past year Alex Rodriguez was going to be paid $30 million dollars for one season. I'd say thats a pretty reasonable amount for one person. But all before he had came to the New York Yankees, he was caught using steroids. News outlets, such as Sports center and First Take, were just destroying A-rods reputation as a baseball player. While talking about the situation, Skip Bayless, a popular news anchor on First Take, found it laughable that Alex Rodriguez told the public that he just stopped using steroids as he was going to be apart of the New York Yankees baseball club. In this video, it was said that Alex Rodriguez was using steroids as early as high school, and continued to use them in Major League Baseball. This was a guy who had been an MVP (Most Valuable Player) in previous years and was getting slammed by the media. It was said that 104 people had taken the test and out of that, only Alex Rodriguez's name was selected. Alex Rodriguez is one of MLBs best players and his name being the only one to stick out can tell you that he's a big part of the game. Although the media no longer covers the story, the stigma of using steroids will be with be with Rodriguez forever.

Lastly, using steroids can remove accomplishments that a baseball player had earmed. For instance, Barry Bonds, Major League baseball's notorious home-run hitter was caught for using steroids. Before Barry Bonds was ever caught, he had just broke the record for hitting the most home-runs which was held by Hank Aaron. Barry Bonds was stunned when he was caught using steroids. It had affected his baseball career so bad, the MLB considered striking his home-run record.". When caught, Barry Bonds was taken to court and almost had to face ten years for using performance enhancing drugs. Luckily for him, the courts could not prove that Bonds knowingly used performance enhancing drugs. The reason for that was because at the time he was using steroids which tremendously affected his number of home-runs. When people discover that he hit the most home-runs, people will know that he didn't do it naturally and that he cheated by using performance enhancing drugs.

Using performance enhancing drugs is about for a human being. It can be harmful to one's health by becoming infertile and more susceptible to heart trouble. Steroids can also ruin one's accomplishments they had achieved with their sport. In conclusion, the worst part about using steroids is it can ruin a players reputation for the game and people will always know that person didn't do the accomplishments he did without taking any drugs.