Steroid Use in Baseball

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Introduction
Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Baseball are American icons of summer. Baseball is also known as America’s favorite pastime. Many kids start playing baseball in the streets, school-yard, or on formed T-Ball and Little Leagues as young as 3 or 4 years old and will play well into adulthood. Satchel Paige was the oldest Major League Baseball (MLB) player. He retired at the age of 59 (Satchel, n.d.).
In recent years America’s favorite pastime has lost integrity and is under a black cloud of suspicion. Baseball players appear to be super-human with better batting averages, faster pitching, breaking world records, and even their body size appears to be bigger. All of these pieces have brought into question the use of steroids or other performance enhancing drugs and the enforcement or regulating usage of these products. One of the most recent cases being Milwaukee Brewer’s own Ryan Braun among many others.
Steroid usage is rampant in baseball and players make choices to use the steroids despite the fact that MLB banned the usage of steroids in 2001 (Drug Policy, 2014). MLB did not begin drug testing for steroids until March of 2003 or institute fines and suspensions until 2005 (Drug Policy, 2014).
In 2002 Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB produced a policy to begin testing players in 2003. In 2003 the first year testing began and despite the new policy 104 MLB players tested positive for steroids (Schlegel, 2009). The U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing Restoring Faith in America’s Pastime: Evaluating Major League Baseball’s Efforts to Eradicate Steroid Use. Even though one year earlier government officials held a similar hearing for the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004, they were right back at it. Regretta...

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...Use in Baseball: The Impact of Culture. Ethics & Behavior, 21(2), 91-102. doi:10.1080/10508422.2011.551466.

"The Behavioral Effects of Anabolic Steroid Use." DUJS Online. Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, 29 Apr. 2012. Retrieved June 8, 2014, from http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/news/the-behavioral-effects-of-anabolic-steroid-use#.U5TTDfmwJ-A.

Thompson, Teri, and et al. American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.

United States Congress House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Mitchell Report: The Illegal use of Steroids in Major League Baseball, Day 2: Hearing Before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, Second Session, February 13, 2008. Congressional Hearing. Washington: U. S. GPO, 2008. Print.

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