...What are anabolic steroids, and how have they affected the world of sports? Synthetic drugs that are correlated with male sex hormones are commonly referred to as anabolic steroids. These drugs can come in many different varieties, orally and injection-based. With high expectations in many sports programs, some athletes will turn to steroids for an advantage. Over the span of more than half a century, the world of sports has completely evolved at the hands of these drugs. Steroids have negatively impacted sports leagues worldwide in terms of player-health, league reputations, and record books. Anabolic steroids are known for providing a user with unmatched gains in agility, speed, size, and strength; however, the negative side effects of steroids...
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...Major League Baseball (MLB) is one of the oldest professional sports leagues in the United States. Professional baseball teams have existed in the Unites States since the mid 1800’s. As with any professional sport, the MLB had its share of scandals. Prior to the 1920’s, not many homeruns were hit in the game. After the 1920’s the MLB league grew and drew in more crowds. By 1990, new stadiums with artificial turf were being built by every MLB team. Another great change was that in the 90’s homeruns dominated much of the game. In such a short period of time, homeruns went from never being seen in a game, to dominating the game itself. This trend drew media attention, and the speculation about anabolic steroids began in the early 2000’s (Klein, 2006)....
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...“A cloud hangs over baseball. It's a cloud called drugs and it's permeated our game” (Ueberroth). This idea of a cloud hanging over baseball and how drugs are permeated the game is how PEDs have spread through the MLB and ruined the league. The prospects see these great major leaguers using these drugs and look up to them, therefore start to take drugs. Teenagers these days are looking up to their favorite major league players, yet most of them are using performance enhancing drugs. If we find out that one of our favorite players are using these, we should really focus on the negative outcome of their actions. Lord of the Flies is a great example of what MLB players will do to conceal their drug usage. For example, Jack tried so hard to stay...
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...Letter to Editor Dear Editor: On August 8 in 2007 Barry Bonds broke the Major League Baseball (MLB) home run records by 31years. However, most major newspapers and magazines columns were indifferent and negative to his home run record. The expressions from them are very different from wild enthusiasms and cheers when he broke Mark McGwire’s single season home run record because Bonds is under suspicion for steroid use. Beside in these cases, major leaguers’ performance enhancing drugs stories rise out many different way such as Jose Canseco autobiography, Mark McGwire admits he uses the steroids and goes on to hit a then record 70 homers. According to the MLB official site, the investigation of MLB organization found that 5 percent to 7 percent of 1438 tests were positive about performance enhancing drugs during the 2003 season. The Major League player were used performance enhancing drug and even existence of the drug policy keep under suspicion about it nowadays . So, I think MLB need to improve current performance enhancing drugs policy. According to the MLB official site, Major League Baseball’s drug policy joint drug prevention and treatment program is established by agreement after the 2004 season between the MLB Players Association and the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball in order to ban baseball players’ performance enhancing drugs including anabolic steroids and other illegal drugs. There was one unannounced mandatory test for each...
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...hard contact with a baseball, can throw a ball extremely hard, and some of them can even steal up to 40 bases along with those home runs. Oh, they also all served penalties for using performance enhancing drugs, or P.E.D.s for short. Five of those players mentioned either broke a record or have achieved an accomplishment in baseball that only a select few have accomplished. They would all for sure be first ballot Hall of Famers if it wasn’t for one little scratch mark on their resume that negates...
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...It has been a constant debate recently whether steroids and performance enhances should be allowed in sports today. This topic usually occurs in baseball but in recent discoveries, many football players are condemned for doping. Vast names in sports such as: Ray Lewis, Alex Rodriguez, and Christian Laettner were all suspended by their respected leagues for doping. Steroids should be banned in professional sports today because they give athletes unfair advantages, they’re horrible to the athletes’ body, and there can be severe side effects. There are copious types of steroids that athletes use. “The most common type of steroids that athletes use are anabolic steroids, or synthetic versions of the male hormone, testosterone” (Quinn). This particular...
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...PEDS standing for Performance Enhancing drugs, most commonly referred to as steroids. The question is though how do these PED’s effect baseball? Why do people feel the need to take steroids in baseball? I’ll tell you why it helps you in everything you do on the diamond, from running to throwing and to hitting it helps you achieve things you never saw possible as a normal person. It help you out to a point that it is just unfair and not fit for baseball. Steroids have changed baseball as we know it and not in a good way. They have made the Major League of Baseball or also known as the MLB look a question such as, Are PED users able to make it into the Hall of Fame? What is the appropriate consequence for these players getting caught? And is...
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...Performance Enhancement Drugs in Sports, the Ethical Choice In May 28, 2002, former Major League Baseball player Ken Caminiti admits to Sports Illustrated in the article “Caminiti Comes Clean” that he used steroids during his 1996 National League MVP (most valuable player) season with the San Diego Padres and he estimated that half of the players in the big leagues were also using steroids. He later died of a heart attack at age 40 where it was ruled by the New York Medical Examiner that drugs are a factor in his death. In October 5, 2007, track star Marion Jones admits to use steroids during the 2000 Olympic Games where she won three Gold Medals and two Bronze Medals. She was later sentenced to six months in prison for lying to the court and stripped off of all of her medals. Throughout history, there have been many stories of athletes using performance enhancing drugs, but none more than in the last 20 years. As technology advances in science as well as the media, more drugs has been engineer to enhance performance as well as the test to detect such drugs, as the results get to the hands of the media, the entire world would be at noticed in a manner of minutes. The fact is that performance enhancing drugs have existed since the time of the ancient Greek during the original Olympic Games from 776 BC – 393 BC. The question is why should we care? If most athletes are using it, is it a plain level field? And why is the government involved? Should the government be involved? ...
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...OUTLINE RESEARCH PAPER 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...
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...Steroids: an Athlete's Choice Most athletes are paid outrageous salaries to play sports they have come to perfect, giving their fans what they expect. Most fans want to see athletes with explosive speed, excessive strength, extreme attitudes, and perform beyond the normal athletic ability. Athletes have come to increase these attributes with assistance of performance enhancing drugs, which is acceptable and encouraged by most fans. This day in age many professional athletes have evolved into “super human beings” taking sports into a new era; as history and statistics shows this could be due to the use of performance enhancing drugs. However, steroids have been known to cure certain illnesses but it can also cause many repercussions if used inappropriately. The History Steroids have been around for sometime time now, these days steroids have been widely known for its usage in professional sports. History shows that steroids were used as a medical treatment to assist in abnormal growth deficiencies. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy [ONDCP] (2008), steroids were developed in the late 1930’s primarily to treat hypogonadism, a condition in which the testes do not produce sufficient testosterone for normal growth, development, and sexual functioning. Thereafter, scientist discovered steroids enhanced the growth of skeletal muscle in laboratory test animals giving an appeal for humans to intake. By this discovery lead to an outbreak of athletic interest and...
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...Baseball, Steroids and Business Ethics: How Breaches of Trust Can Change the Game: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1902) Baseball, Steroids and Business Ethics: How Breaches of Trust Can Change the Game Published : February 20, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton The day after former Senator George Mitchell released his damning report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball last December, President George Bush, a former baseball-team owner himself, seemed to speak for many disgusted fans when he pronounced, "Steroids have sullied the game." The Mitchell Report fingered 89 professional ball players, but many of these allegations were nothing new for baseball watchers. Game of Shadows, a 2006 exposé by a pair of investigative journalists, and Juiced, a 2005 tell-all memoir by player José Canseco, described a world of professional baseball rife with performance-enhancing drug abuse. The ongoing scandal, which first surfaced in the late 1990s, has bubbled on for a decade, leading commentators to label it the "steroids era." With fans aware of such egregious bad behavior, why has attendance at Major League Baseball games reached record-breaking highs during that same time period? Are baseball's "consumers" impervious to the ethical lapses of their teams? No, say Wharton professors, but the case demonstrates how bias, competition and a lack of oversight worked together to create an ethically toxic atmosphere. This is a single/personal...
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...of fixing had caused injury before. The Black Sox Scandal seemed destined to ruin baseball as a professional sport entirely. The Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds made it to the 1919 World Series. This World Series is said to be the most well-known outrage in baseball history. The best players in the league were not making much more than the average baseball player and a bribe of money could sway the outcome of any game. What player would pass up additional money? Approximately eighty thousand dollars was paid off by gamblers to players of the White Sox team to affect the outcome of the games. During these games, the White Sox manager,...
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...Steroids and Baseball Many people have been questioning Major League Baseball (MLB) about its players using performance enhancing drugs such as steroids. This issue has become controversial because players are cheating to enhance their physical abilities of playing the sport. Many people believe it is immoral and isn’t fair to those who work hard every day through countless hours of practice, sweat, and extreme physical conditioning to get to where they are at; and others are cheating by taking steroids. A great example of performance enhancing drug abuse is the Barry Bonds era. We all believed that he was a man of unique strength and miraculous physical capabilities with his numerous homeruns, but then found out he was cheating by using steroids and made his accomplishments a disgrace to the sport and an embarrassment to its MLB fans. The MLB needs to enforce sterner random drug testing on its players, harsher fines, and repeated offenders should be banned from the sport so it may become a more moral sport. Steroids and other similar muscle building drugs are drugs that can actually increase your abilities instead of hindering them. Most organized sports associations setup a strict drug testing policy which allows very little room for mistakes. Despite the strict trends set by other associations, Major League Baseball still has an extremely lax drug testing policy and has been under heavy media scrutiny. The MLB should strengthen their drug abuse policy to eliminate...
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...Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Baseball ESPN stated that about 5-7% of the MLB players used performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, and it continued to grow over the years. Baseball has been around since 1839. Countless people watch baseball every year, whether that is at home or from the baseball diamond itself. Baseball changes a little every year, including various issues. Baseball has encountered race and still continued to be a favorite past time. Steroids are now becoming a piece of baseball’s history. Performance-enhancing drugs played a major role in baseball history. Performance-enhancing drugs were a problem when it came to baseball. Steroids, a very popular PED, have been outlawed from the MLB since 1991. Except, that was not the end of them. MLB began to test their players of PEDs in 2003. They were trying to figure out how many players were using PEDs. With their results, they decided to continue to do more testing. Those who were using PEDs and caught through testing were suspended depending on their number of offenses. According to ESPN, the first offense of having used PEDs was a 50 game suspension. The second offense was a 100 game suspension. PEDs had become a serious problem in baseball. Not...
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...Have you ever wondered what happens to athletes who are caught using steroids? It makes the news, the athlete is criticized by the world, but what punishments do they actually receive? Rafael Palmeiro, a baseball great, was given a ten-day suspension after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. What kind of example are we setting for our young athletes? Pete Rose made a mistake by gambling on baseball and he was given a lifetime suspension and a ban from the baseball Hall of Fame (Jordan, 2006). This gives the impression that steroid use is not necessarily a big deal. Who cares about a ten-day suspension? You still get to continue playing with your team and still have an opportunity to “earn” your way into the Hall of Fame. We need to have stronger punishments for athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs. These drugs are bad for the body, for the team, and for the family. Performance-enhancing drug use has extreme negative effects on the body. Many common side effects and psychological symptoms occur from their use. Just a few of the side effects include: liver tumors, kidney tumors, jaundice, fluid retention, hypertension, increases in LDL (bad cholesterol), decreases in HDL (good cholesterol), severe acne, trembling, enlarged facial bones, nausea, vomiting, bone pain, and muscle cramps. Psychological effects include, but are not limited to, depression, irritability, inability to concentrate, forgetfulness, lack of interest or energy for everyday life, aggressiveness...
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