Performance Enhancing Drugs in Major League Baseball

Assignment 3-1

Johnny J. Goplin

HUMN. 341

Performance Enhancing Drugs in Major League Baseball

Feb. 15, 2008


















Baseball is an American pastime, icon, and is in all of American popular culture from TV, movies, toys, books and so much more. For the last 5 years, Congress and other people have been trying to get to the bottom of the steroid use and other performance enhancing drugs used such as HGH (human growth hormones). This has been a taboo type of a subject to talk about from the 1980's-mid 2000's. These drugs have had a major impact in baseball as longtime records are being broke by outright cheaters who are enhancing muscles to hit the ball farther and throw the ball harder. Baseball for a long time has had controversies with drug use, but the drugs used in the past my baseball players, these drugs didn't enhance their abilities. As casual fans or die-hard fans it was getting obvious that baseball players were getting bigger and bigger.
Special baseball players had historic records that seemed unattainable until the steroids came into use. from 1973-1990 there was only 1 50 home run hitter in a season. In the last 15 years there has been many 50++ home run hitters and many in 1 season. True baseball players are bigger and stronger and they keep their bodies in shape, but for the few players taking steroids it is hurting all the honest hard working ball players who want an opportunity to get into the record books by the hard work and God given natural talent.
One Mark McGuire a heavy hitting baseball player who holds rookie home run records and was the first to break Roger Maris's long lasting home run record has not been elected to the baseball Hall of Fame, due to the assumption he did steroids. He has not been caught, but his name has been mentioned using the drugs and this is the reason why he is being kept out of the Hall of Fame.
With baseball players who would have been definitely Hall of Famers without the use of enhancing drugs, may now never get in such as Roger Clemons, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and so many more. Baseball players blamed a lot of other things on their steroid use, that never had any merit, it was their own selves to choose to do them, knowing it was wrong. I was a kid in the 1980's and I knew it was bad then and now. major League Baseball will recover and this 15 year period may go down as the dirtiest era, and a lot of fans will have their own asterisks besides the tainted records that were achieved during this era.