Putting the steroid era in the rearview mirror

Twitter
Facebook

 Email This Post
Reddit
Digg

Tell us what you think!
Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.

It’s time to face it – steroids are an act of evolution. As horrible as it is, knowing that this chemical has diminished our father’s and grandfather’s game, it’s something that we all need to recognize as normal. We saw it in Mark McGwire’s locker in 1998, and we turned a blind eye to it. Steroids are the new item to enhance your performance, just as batting gloves and pine tar have been in the past. The anti-steroid community received their knockout blow this past weekend, when it was revealed that steroid free Alex Rodriguez – the same man who single-handedly saved some respect for the already – tarnished home run records – actually failed a drug test back in 2003.

Before you completely throw this athlete under the bus, you must realize some of the logistics. In 2003, there were no penalties to a failed steroid test. The tests were supposed to remain anonymous, and only be used to see if action needed to be taken. The other thing that separates this former MVP award winner and future Hall-of-Famer from other steroid using athletes is that he never lied under oath to taking steroids. The other men that A-Rod will always be associated with – a certain pitcher and hitter – did. Rodriguez took the public approach and lied to Katie Couric.

One thing that never gets mentioned when referring to performance enhancing drugs, is that it does not help you hit a baseball. There’s no doubt that Rodriguez and Barry Bonds are two of the greatest at making contact with the ball, and for that reason alone, they should be remembered with a bronze plaque.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not condone the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but at some point we need to accept it at the professional level. Can we really expect our children and grandchildren to know the history of the game if all of these great athletes are torn away from every scrap of our memory?

It seems as though we are on the way to having the steroid era behind us, and hopefully this is the last gust of scandal-infected wind that we have to deal with.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.