In Defense Of Steroids

First of all, steroids in baseball gets a bad rep. In football, it's only a four game suspension and no one really thinks anything of it. One of the greatest defensive players in the game right now, San Diego LB Shawn Merriman, was caught doing steroids. He took his suspension and no one really thought anything of it. It's almost worse for Merriman than for Bonds because Merriman plays a more physical position and he job specifically requires strength. So why is it abhorrent for baseball players to do steroids and not football players?

The reason is the culture of each sport. Football came out a long time ago and said doing steroids was a no-no. They came out at a reasonable time and told all football players early on about the negative affects of steroids, and knew it created an unfair competitive edge. Baseball didn't do that. They implicitly said it was acceptable to do steroids even though it is bad.

What people don't understand is this culture of baseball. EVERYONE in baseball is guilty of steroids being rampant in the sport. There was a code of silence in baseball, if you said something, you would be ostracized from the game you love so much. Roy Oswalt came out recently pissed that he had to play a player on 'roids but I didn't hear him say anything when he saw players using it. In fact, Oswalt played with Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens and I didn't hear a peep from him then. I'm sure he and every single player in baseball knew of at least one person doing steroids or HGH and they didn't say a thing. I don't think people quite grasp the psychological and sociological impact there is in this situation. Think about this. You're a student in a giant math lecture hall. The professor is going over really fast some equation that you don't understand. Why don't you raise your hand to ask the professor to slow down and go over the equation so you can learn it. I mean, you're paying money for an education, you should get one right? Well, normally you don't because there's hundreds of other kids in the class who look down on you if you wasted THEIR time. There's sociological and psychological factors that make an environment that's not conducive for you to ask questions. Now the culture of baseball was not even close to the factors that go into you in a giant lecture hall.

If anyone outed a player, you personally then would have felt punishments. Outing a player was just something you could not do. ESPN is running a week long OTL special on steroids, and former A's trainer and conditioning coach (who played with Conseco and McGuire and many other 'roid users because the A's were a huge club to bring in steroids into baseball) said that he knew Conseco was doing steroids and he couldn't do anything and he didn't want to do anything. Not only would this coach never find a job again, but the A's would lose a huge asset to their team in Conseco.

(SIDENOTE: I just want to go off on a little tangent here. A few months ago, Jose Conseco said that Alex Rodriguez did steroids and nobody believed him. People thought this was a publicity stunt and Conseco got a lot of crap for this. It also looked extremely fishy when reports came out than Conseco blackmailed Magglio so that Mags would get his name out of Jose's new book. A-Rod has since admitted to doing steroids. It now makes you wonder about Magglio as well. Look who's laughing now)

The biggest offender to the culture of steroids in baseball was Bud Selig. One of the only defenders I've heard of him was Skip Bayless, and Skip makes a valid point. Skip talked to Selig during the late 90's when 'roids was rampant and Selig admitted that he was up against one of THE most powerful unions in the U.S. in the Players Association. The Association knew testing for steroids would hurt their clients and thus did everything in their power to stop Selig from being able to do anything about testing for steroids or HGH in baseball. I think this is a good point. However, I refuse to believe, that as the commissioner of ALL of Major League Baseball, he could not do a single thing. Selig didn't speak up, Selig didn't make public his dislike for steroids, Selig didn't publicly try to enforce testing, Selig didn't do shit. And this contributed to players being "allowed" to do steroids.

If you're a player and you see teammates all around you doing steroids, nobody is saying anything, these players doing great things, and having no negative consequences, what's the downside then to you for doing steroids? No one would have predicted the negative backlash steroids would have caused ten years down the line. I'm sure if Mark McGuire knew he wouldn't get into the baseball Hall Of Fame if he did steroids, he would have not done them. But nobody knew back them. People need to remember that what these players were doing was not against the rules of baseball. Sure, what they were doing was against US law, but this becomes a negligent factor in terms of the way players played the game. From a rational, economic, sociological, and psychological perspective, baseball players had no reason to NOT do steroids.

The vast majority of players who did steroids were not the big players like Bonds, A Rod, and McGuire, they were guys on the cusp on making major league rosters. It is extremely hard to get into the big leagues from the minors. If you're in the minors and you see your teammates around you getting called up, why would you not do steroids? This environment is almost forcing you to do steroids.

Injecting steroids or HGH alone does not magically make a person better or stronger. A player still has to work out and condition himself to play baseball. They still have to have the skill to see the ball coming towards the play and have the hand/eye coordination to hit the ball. These are all things steroids don't improve. However, once a player makes contact, sure, 'roids make that ball go deeper and farther. As my roommate puts it "You know, Barry Bonds may not have hit 72 HRs that year, but he still probably would have hit 50 had he not been on steroids" Also, while some batters might have been juicing, you don't know is that pitcher was juicing as well. Again, steroids doesn't help with control but sure it does help with speed. Maybe those pitchers were trying to get themselves a competitive advantage as well so the batters were forced to do HGH or 'roids.

Also, I would like to interject something. People seem to give Andy Pettitte a free pass because he fully admitted early on that he used steroids and that it was only for an injury. However, one of the reasons steroids was made illegal was for the purpose of healing from injuries and not just from constant use to build power. You're not allowed to help speed up the process of injuries because this also gives you an unfair advantage compared to everyone else that had to deal with injuries without steroids.

Steroids was so rampant in baseball that you can not say for 100% certainty who was and was not using steroids. You don't exactly know which players were using or if most of them were. This means you can not say just how "skewed" the stats are. Let's say Roger Clemens was facing Barry Bonds and Bonds hits a home run. Is not that a legitimate HR for the record books? If both the pitcher and the batter using performance-enhancing drugs, if the ultimate outcome not the same as if both players did not use the drugs? This is why I don't think players who we know did use steroids should get penalized in the record books or in the hall of fame. You can not say for certain what exactly the competitive edge actually was.

In fact, throughout history, there's always been things that have skewed numbers. The dead ball era most certainly deflated stats and hurt players like Ty Cobb. Way back in the day, black people were not allowed to play baseball. You don't think the addition of black people would have decreased the current white players numbers? The pitching mounds have been moved back and forth and up and down, all which affect players numbers as well.

People also don't realize that steroids saved baseball. In the summer of 1998, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa (who actually BTW seemingly is getting farther and farther away from being connected to steroids) were both in the hunt to beat Roger Marris' record of 61 HRs in a single season. Baseball was lackluster and boring until these two competitors from rival teams starting facing off against each other. Because both were "on steroids", they were able to bring fans back into the game of baseball.

Now don't get me wrong, despite the title and my whole speech, I am not advocating that people do use steroids or HGH or anything of the sort. Steroids have a lot of negative consequences to the human body, especially to young kids who probably are the biggest age bracket to use steroids. It stunts development and creates physical problems. I am also not letting these players completely off the hook. Despite the fact that probably a vast majority of people did juice, there are plenty who didn't. People still have take personal responsibility for their own actions. A lot of what the Nazi's did in Germany was because if the culture Hitler created and psychological tests (like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim Experiment)back this up, however, you can't put all of the blame on the culture. (NOTE: I am not comparing baseball to Nazi Germany, I am just using that as an example of where culture dictates human behavior)

I believe the blame does start at the top. Bud Selig and the owners and the Player Union and such all had the power to put a stigma in the culture with little repercussions to themselves and culture is trickle down. But all players need to take responsibility for their actions as well. They knew full well what they were doing was giving themselves a competitive edge.

So I think people need to stop putting such a negative stigma on the players who did steroids before 2003. Sure, if a player now does steroids, that players deserves all the criticism he gets. But ESPN needs to stop the hype and falsities of players who did steroids and HGH in the past. I think people think so low of players who juiced in the past because of the messages outlets like ESPN are displaying and this needs to stop. Also, I'm sick and tired of hearing about this 24/7.