The Steroid Era: What we do for the Money

 

Former MLB player Jose Canseco was the first player to knock the lid off the steroid scandal in the league. Canseco was considered a “snitch” in the league. He wrote a book about him taking performance enhancement drugs and his fellow peers that took them as well. Many didn’t like what he did by airing out the dirty laundry that the nation wasn’t ready for. When we say Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hitting all those home runs in 1998, we were amazed but also scratching our heads too. The country was trying to figure out how they hit all those home runs. Both of these players were smacking them out the park with no problem. Then to come to find out that they were both using just made many baseball fans turn their heads on the sport. I was one of them as well; losing the love that I had once before.

However it didn’t stop there. Through the years we found out so many players were using when the test results came back. Baseball couldn’t recover from the bad wound. We as people were mainly insulted that these players would do just about anything for money. What about the great players that came before them that did it the right way? Were they just trying to tarnish the legacy of these players and what they represented? Hmm, we would never know. One thing is for sure is that when the Mitchell Report surfaced many players weren’t safe from the public backlash.

Alex Rodriguez one of the greatest players in the sport came up in the report and he denied that he was apart of using steroids. Then finally his tune changed and said that he didn’t know what he was taking. Such a crock! That made me so furious for him to think that we are stupid and didn’t know that back in 2001 when he signed that lucrative $225 million contract with Texas, you were under a lot of pressure to perform at a high level. So in the end his legacy is crushed and you can see those steroids that he was taken have an effect on his career the last couple of years. This man is breaking down slowly and he isn’t the home run hitter that we once known. Trust me I’m a big A-Rod fan, but what’s right is right. I’m a realist and I understand what the truth is.

You would think that with a decade of horror in MLB and the bad taste they left in the mouths of fans all around they would just get it right. But no they haven’t! This year alone we have seen players come up positive for performance enhancement drugs. Players like Ryan Braun, Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon all have and they have been suspended for 50 games except Braun (NYTimes, 2012). But that is another subject for another day. That man got off real easy and I think he is such a liar. Braun had us all fooled that he was a true MVP, but he wasn’t that. Just a man with a trophy.

Commissioner Bud Selig has done everything in his power to clean up the game but there is only so much he can do. In 2010, he vowed that the steroid era was gone and never to come back. But we saw that was far from the truth. No fault to him, but when players want to cheat; they will cheat. With high expectations and lucrative contracts that are given to these players, they will do anything to seal the deal. So all you Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out there the league is watching and hopefully we can get the game back where it use to be. Once the MLB was the country’s top sport but that has changed in the last 10 years. People are walking away from the game and support has been lower than decades ago. Do you guys think the game will get the respect it use to have?