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Can Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED) actually be positive and beneficial for Major League Baseball?

“As the likes of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez saw their usage exposed, the sport fought back with tougher drug testing and after the 2005 season produced a program punitive enough to minimize the game's doping culture.” (Braun's test result gives MLB major jolt; With MVP under cloud, steroid era is revisited Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY), "Probably the biggest sentence to which he was subjected is the impact on whether he'll be a lock for the Hall of Fame and the stigma that is now attached to his name and his records."(Barry Bonds is sentenced in enduring BALCO saga; No end in sight to BALCO's reach by: Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY). Quotes like these could have been seen all over newspapers and magazines all throughout the past decade. Yes, these athletes did use Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED), but a debate has raged on about just how right are we to scrutinize them for those actions and just how inappropriate their actions were? With baseball professionals on both sides arguing how much of an impact they really had on the game. More so, I'd like to ask the question of whether what they had done was actually in a way good for baseball, and whether Performance Enhancing Drugs should even be banned from baseball? Which, I believe they shouldn’t be for numerous reasons. In order to understand just how “not as out of the ordinary” as they were deemed to be the actions of athletes were, we must look into the history of performance enhancement in sports. Once we do, we realize something, and it is that athletes have been using a variety of tricks ever since competitive sports began in order to gain an edge on their competition. As Drs. DINES & POSITANO say in their Daily News column “It's an age old problem: since as early as the first Olympic Games in 776 BC, athletes have been altering training and dietary regimens to enhance performance.” The origin of the word 'doping' itself is attributed to the Dutch word 'doop,' which is a viscous opium juice, the drug of choice of the ancient Greeks." (http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002366)

- "The modern applications [of drug use in sports] began in the late nineteenth century, with preparations made from the coca leaf -- the source of cocaine and related alkaloids. Vin Mariani, a widely used mixture of coca leaf extract and wine, was even called 'the wine for athletes.' It was used by French cyclists and... by a champion lacrosse team. Coca and cocaine were popular because they staved off the sense of fatigue and hunger brought on by prolonged exertion."

- "In 1904 Olympics marathon runner, Thomas Hicks, was using a mixture of brandy and strychnine [a stimulant that is fatal in high doses] and nearly died. Mixtures of strychnine, heroin, cocaine, and caffeine were used widely by athletes and each coach or team developed its own unique secret formulae. This was common practice until heroin and cocaine became available only by prescription in the 1920s."

PED Break From Long Withstanding Tradition of “Fair Play”

- People often claim that PED are a means of cheating because it gives and “unfair” advantage to players, and breaks the long tradition of classy clean play. Some players are even going to be prevented from entering into the Baseball Hall of Fame and designated as “cheaters”, but are these new age cheaters any different then the “cheaters” that came before them.

- Famed Baseball Quote - "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." Mark Grace 2002 (Non-steroid user)

Classic ways of cheating in Baseball

- Pitches and the Altering of Baseballs by Pitchers. A little bit of altering to the baseball before the pitch is thrown could give a pitcher the advantage they would need to get a batter out. But before you think that this was relegated to players who weren't good enough to get anyone out in the first place, you would probably be best served to know exactly who was doing this. Hall of Fame pitchers were known, and in many cases admitted, ball doctorers. One of the most famous pitchers by name in Baseball history, Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry, was infamous for doctoring the ball while playing in the major leagues. He would perform these alterations to the ball almost prior to every pitch. A quick touch of his cap or sleeve would load up his famous "vasoline" ball.

Bats, Corked and Otherwise A big advantage that hitters will often try to get is through their bats. The argument on whether corked bats are that effective will rage on for decades in the great sport, but the fact of the matter is that it is considered illegal to do and it has been done. Norm Cash, an outfielder in the 60's, led the AL in batting with a .361 average while hitting 41 home runs. Something that he has never came close to doing before or even again in his career. He admitted that he used a corked bat that season. The most profound moment for Cash was, after he retired, he actually demonstrated to people at Sports Illustrated how he would cork his own bat and his method.

Stealing Signs and Home Field Advantages. Another big contention is that there teams are stealing each other's signs on the field. Although this practice is actually legal in baseball, there's an extent to it. While it is legal on the field, the use of any other technology or personnel not on the field in order to do this is considered illegal.

Other baseball cheaters; For instance, the popular example is of the famous family of groudskeepers, the Bossards. Their family started in the 1920's when Emil Bossard would move back the portable fences as a Cleveland Indians' groudskeeper to nullify the distinct power advantage that the Yankees had. Then his son, Gene, would take it a step further. He would "freeze" balls, keeping them in a room with a humidifier for a period of almost two weeks, which would subsequently make them heavier and less likely to travel further than a normal ball. Then his son, Roger, was actually the one who made the basepaths softer and, thereby, harder to steal bases from and stretch long plays out for an extra base.

“Steroid Era” Bonds-Sosa-McGwire a.k.a. Most Exiting Years in the MLB

- After the1994 baseball strike, baseball has been in a deep hole financially because it was hard to bring back fans and some players were even rusty because they were out of shape. Due to the fact the fans were so high on players and expected nothing but the best from these guys game in and game out; players have been under pressure, and some have turned to performing enhancement drugs to keep the game and their careers alive.

Benefit of Increased Offensive Production to League the Average Team Revenue Increases. Along with player performance and salary increases, the Steroids Era also saw significant improvement in league franchise finances. While franchise values fell during the early 90ís, they increased dramatically during the Steroids Era, with the average MLB franchise value rising from $140 million in 1994 to $332 million in 2004. More applicable to our analysis, franchise revenues accelerated from a Pre-Steroid Era CAGR of 3.4% to a Steroid Era growth rate of 5.0%. Using these growth rates and the 2004 median franchise profit margin of 4.7%, we calculate that the NPV of the profit stream for the average MLB franchise has increased by $52.2 million. It appears, therefore, that steroids produce positive results not just for players, but for leagues, owners and even for consumers who get to witness more offense in games. However, the costs of steroid use to leagues must also be factored into the payoffs.

During Major League Baseballs "Steroid Era"(roughly early 90's to mid-00's)baseball players were tempted by steroids to recover from injury faster. Baseball players who used steroids are never given credit for the fact that missing fewer games and hitting more home runs would actually help the team win ball games. They have no "competitive spirit," they're just greedy. Barry Bonds' 2002 MVP season, where he single-handedly carried the Giants to the play-offs and almost won the World Series, is "tainted" by his alleged steroid use. Steroids, because they enhance the body physically, are condemned today. But many players in the 1970's and 1980's used marijuana or even cocaine to feel better mentally and relax themselves physically, improving their performance, whereas "clean" athletes might have collapsed under the stress of their jobs or sunk into the legal drug called alcohol. Aren't there at least a few of these drug users in the Baseball and Pro Football Halls of Fame? We know there must be; before drug testing, one would have had to be arrested or been an addict for his legacy to be tarnished. But nobody insists that everybody from that era be banned from the Hall of Fame for smoking weed, even though we expect that many and probably most of them did it.

“Can someone seriously argue that it is ethical to take a drug to make a performance possible, but unethical to take a drug that makes that performance better? Isn't making a performance possible at all the ultimate performance enhancement? If there had been a drug that would have given us five more seasons of Sandy Koufax at the top of his game, how would that have been a bad thing, everything else being equal? Sports are rife with drugs. Without drugs of one sort or another, the NFL season would never begin, and the baseball season would end sometime in June owing to a lack of participating teams.” Sports Illustrated

Also consider that none of the non-steroid using players ever stood up to object to steroid use. They never told their union or their owners that this era would be "tainted." They never went public with their complaints; as far as we know, they had none.

Wrap-Up

Steroids, like good nutrition, weight training, watching game film and sports psychology, are inputs which help baseball players to produce better statistical numbers, especially the offensive numbers that fans enjoy. The question then becomes, why are steroids reviled for their effects on professional baseball, but these other inputs are not? One possible answer, which is addressed in our player calculations, is that steroids harm the athlete and that we are trying to protect the health of these athletes (Osborne 2005). However, considering the violent nature of other sports, such as rugby or boxing, this seems unlikely ñ fans enjoy, or at least accept, that sports are physical endeavors that sometimes cause pain (Osborne 2005). A second, related argument is that society is trying to protect the health of children who look at these athletes as role models.

Steroid use is a victimless activity. This is not to say that it's not dangerous, or will not have consequences that may hurt one's family financially and emotionally over the long-term, but it is victimless in that it doesn't harm anybody else's rights.

Over time, the science behind steroids seems more advanced, with fewer severe health and behavioral problems than users in the 1970's-80's had.

If steroids were legal, there would actually be more information, and a safer, more controlled environment in their distribution.