Steroids & Baseball - Do These Drugs Really Give Players an Advantage?

Over the past five years, Major League Baseball has seen many of its recent stars come under the microscope of scrutiny. This scrutiny has been to due to the recent findings that many of the games recent sluggers who were hitting homeruns at an alarming rate during the 1990s, had accomplished the historical feats due to the fact that they were using the performance enhancing steroids. In lieu of these accusations, many sluggers who were racking up gaudy power numbers, such as Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa, have had their otherwise Hall of Fame careers tarnished; furthermore, these accusations has even prompted many in the media to ban them from Cooperstown. Not even the commissioner of Major League Baseball has escaped the backlash as Bud Selig has drawn the wrath of the Federal government. Congressional hearings have reprimanded Major League Baseball claiming that baseball did nothing even though they knew about steroid use; furthermore, Congress has stated that baseball did nothing during 1990s homerun barrage because it was effectively reviving their sport in so far is giving its fan base a new found interest level.

Thus, the question of steroids has come to light: do these performance-enhancing drugs actually improve a baseball player’s skill level?

Quite simply, yes and no. The fact is a player who has ingested steroids is not able to further enhance his hand-eye coordination. When ingesting steroids ones hand-eye coordination will not be affected. Thus, because the ingestion of steroid does not improve hand-eye coordination - the key ingredient to becoming a good hitter - the argument cannot be made that doing so will make a hitter better. Secondly, when generating power at the plate a hitter does so based on technique and mechanics. When a player gets stronger by developing muscle mass, doing so will not allow him to become a better hitter. If anything the development of muscle mass would cause a hitter to lose some of his power due to the fact that adding muscle mass would in turn limit the flexibility of a player. Thus, if a player ingests steroids to become stronger, doing so will not make him a better baseball player.

On the flip side, steroids would benefit a baseball player due to the fact that they would enhance ones ability to recover faster. In other words, when a steroid is introduced to the body, it acts as a muscle repair when the fibers of a muscle are torn down. During a baseball season, a player must play everyday, which consequently means that a player’s muscles must repair themselves daily in order to play at that same level the next day. If a baseball player were to ingest steroids, doing so would enable that player to never get worn down over the course of a season. Thus, from this perspective a player who ingests steroids would benefit from doing so.

Another benefit a player may gain from ingesting steroids is psychological. When a steroid is introduced to the body, it releases a chemical called testosterone. Studies have shown that higher levels of testosterone in men tend to correlate with a man’s aggression and confidence level. When a player is able to compete with a higher level of confidence, then inherently that player will outperform his peers on a competitive playing field. Thus, from this perspective steroids would positively affect a player’s ability to become a better player.

Although an argument can be made regardless of whether ingesting steroid can benefit a baseball player, the simple fact remains that much of the treatment given to Major League Baseball and its players has been unequivocally one-sided and unjust.

Why?

For starters, for many years it has been public knowledge that players in the National Football League have been using performance enhancing steroids in order to become bigger, faster, and stronger; however, unlike as was the case in baseball, the Federal Government did not discipline the NFL’s front office based on the grounds that they had a testing policy. However, over the past year this Congressional stance has been effectively undermined in a case wherein a North Carolina doctor was found to have been issuing prescription steroids to several players under contract with the Carolina Panthers. Nonetheless, the United States government has yet to administer a comparable punishment to the NFL.