The Effect of Steriods in Major League Baseball

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Baseball is known as America’s pastime and is one of the most popular, respected sports on earth. Since the beginning of the sport, it seemingly advances with technology every year making faster and stronger players. The use of steroids became rampant and spread among players and has carried them away from the true history of the game they play. Controversy still today runs around the sport today about fines, punishments and record breaking. The past two decades of Major League Baseball have been tainted because of the use of performance enhancing drugs, also known as steroids, causing the loss of many fans and the true meaning of America’s favorite sport.

In the early 80’s many professional players began to discover steroids, but Major League Baseball had not. As more and more cases of these drugs came about the most serious was that of Mark McGwire who was racing Sammy Sosa to try and break Roger Maris’s single season homerun record ("The Steroids Era "). McGwire admitted to using steroids just before he broke the record hitting 70 homeruns in one season. Later, Sosa was also found to have been using steroids during this period. These events seemed to spark the events of the next decade and beyond with more and more players being busted for steroids ("Event Timeline ").

One of the most recent busts was that of over twenty major league players who included some of the most high paid players in baseball. It included names like Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez, who both were considered icons of major league baseball and hall of fame class players. Rodriguez was even considered to be one of the best players in the game and at one time was the highest paid player in baseball history. These along with other players were the first ev...

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Angelini, Joe . "THE STEROIDS HOME RUNS DEBATE." http://baseballsgreatesthitters.com/Steroids_and_HomeRuns.html. The Greatest Hitter of all time . Web. 9 Mar 2014.

"Event Timeline." http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/news/drug_policy.jsp?content=timeline. MLB. Web. 9 Mar 2014. .

Gilman, Ryan. "Major League Baseball suspends Ryan Braun for using steroids." https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/30/brau-j30.html. N.p., 30 July 2013. Web. 9 March

Quinn, T.J., Mike Fish, and Pedro Gomez. "MLB seeks to suspend A-Rod, Braun." http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9301536/major-league-baseball-suspend-20-players-including-alex-rodriguez-ryan-braun-part-miami-investigation. ESPN.com. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

"The Steroids Era." http://espn.go.com/mlb/topics/_/page/the-steroids-era. ESPN, 5 December 2012. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

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