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Drug use in sports
Steroid effects on baseball players
Illegal drugs in sports
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Professional sports are America’s way of exhibiting true athleticism and skill, but when an athlete uses steroids, it not only diminishes the integrity of the sport, but also the integrity of America as a country. Since the beginning of sports, people have competed to be the best they could be, whether it be Romans fighting to the death, or friendly competition. Although these drugs may be the gateway, or shortcut to success, the athletes who abuse these drugs are not aware of how much they impact the sport and their self. Many fans have lost respect for some of their favorite athletes because, the people they looked up to the most in the athletic world, were caught cheating and have not truly earned their place in professional sports. In the last 100 years, steroids have taken off in America and other countries as a form of a shortcut to physical and athletic perfection. Do those players in the NFL and the MLB that abuse Performance Enhancing Drugs diminish the sports integrity and make it look like anyone can be an athlete if they can find the drug source?
Athletic perfection is something that is not easily obtainable for most, but for some, like Barry Bonds, athletic perfection is obtained easily through shots or pills. Although steroid use has a negative connotation, in the early 1900’s during the World War II era, steroids were used to heal and assist Holocaust victims regain their strength after they had been starved and emaciated. Steroids have also positively impacted the medical field by treating many diseases and illnesses like the serious bone condition, Osteoporosis, patients that are under a doctors care for anemia, patients with liver conditions, those suffering from Bilary Obstruction, and also...
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...s suspended for steroids or drugs(14 images)." Fox Sports. N.p., 29 July 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
Perry, Dayn. "Why do we care about steroids in the MLB but not in the NFL?." CBS Sports. N.p., 23 Aug. 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
"Sammy Sosa Believes He Belongs In Hall Of Fame, Could Run For President Of Dominican Republic." Huffington Post. N.p., 24 Jan. 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
"Steroid Suspensions." Baseball Almanac. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
Baseball?s pride and joy the Hall of Fame is constantly the conversation of self-morals and integrity. The Hall of Fame has asked its voters to consider the players integrity and personality as a whole. The Hall of Fame committee asks that the voters wait until they see truthfulness, integrity, and contrition. Cooperstown is unique compared to the NFL?s Hall of Fame in that Cooperstown actually has a morals clause. This clause states what Cooperstown has been asking the public to consider in the overall integrity of the player. The bottom line is the public believes steroids are illegal and that in any case shall athletes use steroids to get an edge on the game (Cote).
Verducci, Tom. “Why I’ll never vote for a known steroid user in the Hall of Fame.” www.sportsillustrated.cnn. A Time Warner Company, 08 Jan 2013. Web. 24 Jan 2014.
The issue of performance enhancing substances in baseball has been mostly present over the past ten years. The reason for players taking steroids is simple, by taking steroids, hitters like Barry Bonds gained more strength to hit better averages and more home runs, while pitchers like Roger Clemens gained better stam...
Performance enhancing drugs have been a longstanding problem in sports. It not only deteriorates the honesty of the game, but also can have broader social affects that one may not even realize. The use of performance enhancing drugs is especially apparent in Major League Baseball. This problem can be traced back to the 1980’s when baseball was facing one of its first “dark periods”. During the 1980’s Major League Baseball was experiencing a home run drought. Home run totals were down as far as they had been since Babe Ruth, and fans were seemingly becoming bored with the sport. The lack of home runs was a growing concern for players whose salary relied on home run totals. Players needed to find a quick way to boost their power and performance in order to keep the sport alive and to keep bringing in their paychecks. This desire for fame and fortune introduced steroids into Major League Baseball in the 1990’s and 2000’s. Home run totals jumped tremendously during these decades and players were willing to risk being caught using illegal substances in order to shine above the rest. New idols and role models started to sprout up from these outstanding home run statistics and young children started to take notice. This all came tumbling down when these new idols and role models who were making the big bucks and hitting the ball out of the park tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Here lie the affects of a growing social problem in sports. These famed athletes become walking advertisements and promotions for the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports. The influence professional athletes have over aspiring young athletes is very powerful and these roles models make it seem acceptable to use performance ...
"Mitchell report: Baseball slow to react to players' steroid use." ESPN. N.p.. Web. 7 Mar 2014. .
Children who have grown up in America have been brought up with baseball and have looked up to a sports figure as one of their heroes. Steroids and other PEDS have tarnished the American past time favorite game. These drugs have cause doubts and suspicion about the validity o...
Most children who have grown up in an American household have at one point in their lives looked up to sports figures as heroes. Whether it was your grandfather telling his stories of watching Babe Ruth become a legend, your father’s stories of Mickey Mantle and the legendary Yankee teams of the 1950’s and 1960’s, or your own memory of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chasing the home run record, the feeling of wholesomeness that baseball provides has always found its way into many people’s hearts. Steroids have tarnished these sacred memories, cast doubts in the minds of many on the legitimacy of records and statistics and finally affected the way younger players play the game.
The MLB arguably has conveyed a series of mixed messages with regard to its players and their use of steroids. On the one hand, the League apparently cooperates with lawmakers on the issue of regulating drug use among its players; on the other, some of the best athletes in the MLB are suspected of drug use and yet continue to be marketed and revered. Examples of drugs used by MLB stars have included: Anavar, Andriol, Clomid, Depo-Testosterone, Insulin, Stanozolol, and Testosterone1. These drugs are steroids, typically prescribed by medical professionals to patients fighting specific disorders (such as low testosterone or infertility) or provide relief for immense pain or other severe symptoms; they are used “off-label” by athletes for increa...
The era in sports from the late 90s and into the 2000s has often been nicknamed “The Steroid Age” due to the raging use of anabolic steroids and other PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) by professional athletes. The usage of drugs in sports has never been more prevalent during this time, and many people are making it their goal to put an end to the abuse. Influential athletes such as Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens, who were once held as the highest role models to the American people, now watch as their legacies are tarnished by accusations of drug use. The American population, and lovers of sports everywhere, have followed in astonishment through recent years as many beloved athletes reveal their dark secrets. As organizations such as the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) and BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) attempt to halt the use of PEDs, both the drug users and their high-end suppliers work diligently to avoid detection. The use of performance enhancing drugs in recent years has proven to be cancerous to the honesty and competition of modern sports. Although some strides have been made over the past few decades, the use of steroids is in full swing in Major League Baseball, The dangerous side effects of the drugs are often overlooked and many do not realize the message this sends to the youth. The support for halting the usage of PEDs is in need of attention or professional sports will face the loss of all progress made through the past two decades in its war on steroids.
Anabolic steroids are a group of muscle building chemicals, which are synthetic versions of the male hormone, testosterone. Developed in the 1930’s, they were prescribed to aid in muscle tissue repair by those who had undergone surgery or had degenerative diseases. Now the patients do not only use them but also athletes. Starting in the 1940’s steroids were introduced into sports. Steroids were one of the main reasons that Russia’s 1952 Olympic weightlifting team came out with pile of medals. With these results other nations thought their competitors should have the same advantage, and the use of steroids spread like wildfire.(NIDA pg 2) But now steroids are illegal to use if not prescribed by a physician, and have been banned by nearly all-athletic organizations, both professional and amateur.
Abstract: Since the beginning of sports competition, athletes have always looked for some kind of edge over their competitors. They will do whatever it takes to be one of the elite, and that includes injecting supplements into their bodies to make them bigger, stronger, and faster. Steroid use is probably one of the most common drug misuses in sports competition. Athletes found that with anabolic steroids, one could become a better athlete twice as fast. Not until 1975 was the drug first banned from Olympic competition because of the health risks it produced.
The problem of steroid use in baseball came into the national spotlight during the 1990s. It was during this time that home run records were being broken at an incredible pace. It was also during this period when several famous baseball players began to speak out about steroid use in baseball. The most controversial expose about steroid use in baseball is perhaps that of Ken Caminiti in 2002. Caminiti admitted publicly that he was using steroids when he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1996 and in the several seasons following that. That revelation of his drug use highlighted the issue of steroid use in baseball. From that point on, the professional baseball league was under constant scrutiny from the public as well as from the federal agencies. Many had criticized Major League Baseball as ineffective in its efforts to address the issue of steroids use in professional baseball. When the BALCO incident exploded in late 2003 and affected many big name players in baseball, the public and Congress demanded answers from the accused baseball players. It was then that steroid use in baseball sparked media frenzy and legisl...
The intent of this essay is to show that steroids have many negative effects and that steroids, and other natural supplements, should be closely studied by the FDA. This essay will also support the claim that the professional sports industry needs to eliminate steroid use and set a good example for younger athletes.
Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effects not known to the uninformed user.
Smith, Chris. "Why It's Time To Legalize Steroids In Professional Sports." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 24 Aug. 2012. Web. 05 Jan. 2014. .