Steroids: What Is The Issue?

I have finally reached my personal boiling point regarding professional and amateur athletes and their use of steroids.

Now that Alex Rodriguez has been implicated for using the anabolic steroid Primobotan in 2003 while with the Texas Rangers, every hater of A-Rod is going to come out of the woodwork to proclaim a collective, “I told you so!”.

There have, however, been a number of cases of steroid use in amateur and professional sports for decades.

Remember the 1976 Summer Olympics when the East German Swim Team was given anabolic steroids?  Even more of a shocking revelation was that these swimmers were given these steroids unknowingly. And for years afterwards, these women suffered from enlarged hearts, gynecological issues, miscarriages and birth defects. 

All for showing the world superiority in a sport.

Reports regarding steroid use have been steady. Barry Bonds, despite his pleads of innocence, should confess to using them and face his shame. How can a player, who started in 1986 as a solid five-tool player, go from 185-190 pounds to one that weighed 206 – 228 from 1997 to 2007, while at the same time, not lose bat speed and actually gain power?

Bonds may have started out as an exceptional talent while with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but his final days in a San Francisco Giants uniform were filled with controversy. 

His hat size increased from 7-1/8 to 7-1/2, about an inch increase in circumference in his head.  Weight gain is one thing, but an increase in hat size by that margin can only be chemically induced.

Meanwhile. steroids and professional football have a long-standing relationship. Coaches and trainers are constantly pushing players to dig deeper and sacrifice their bodies for the sake of the team. And in many cases, players will seek any edge they can find. 

Some coaches are blind to the sudden increase in weight and speed, and others are not.  I’m not here to point fingers, but merely point to the reality of the situation.  There are also the older players willing to do anything they can to keep their jobs as the younger and faster players come into the league.

Athletes in any sport want an edge, and more so in football, which so closely resembles a war. A battle between offense and defense, and whichever side has the better “soldiers” and planning will win.

The soldiers in this case are, of course, the football players. And those players will look to find any way to beat their opponent. Many of them toil naturally in the gym, honing their bodies and then spending countless hours watching game film and of course, not to mention the hours of practice.

But, there are those that choose to cheat and take the easy way out. And it is these athletes that bring scrutiny to the game. A player that has a monster season will automatically, in the minds of fans, be scrutinized as to whether that player is chemically enhanced. 

I don’t know if many people recall former Detroit Tigers first baseman Norm Cash.  In 1961, Cash had a great year, batting .361 with 41 home runs and 132 RBI’s. Prior to that, Cash had batting averages from 1958 to 1960 of .250, .240 and .286. After 1961, he never hit higher than .283 and his highest home run total was 39 in 1962. 

What attributed to Cash’s banner 1961 season?  If this had happened in recent years, I’m sure many people would say Cash was juiced.

Any athlete that takes steroids does so by choice.  But where does the pressure really come from? I don’t think it’s from coaches or owners but rather from us—the public. 

We want to be amazed by spectacular feats. We want to watch a huge man blast a little white ball 500 feet into a stadium's left-field bleacher section. We want to see a man toss a football 70 yards to an incredibly fast wide receiver on the fly for touchdowns. We want to see a man defy gravity by jumping higher and farther to dunk a basketball. 

And yet, when these players are caught being chemically enhanced, we look at them in shock and in horror and ask them “How could you do this to us?”.  We collectively bail on them when the time comes for the truth.

Perhaps separate leagues should be started in each of the professional sports.  Call them the steroid leagues.  Baseball stadiums can be built with 600 ft. fences, football fields can be enlarged to 100 yards wide by 200 yards long, and basketball hoops raised to 20 feet.

And then arguments can rage on as to which sport is really better—the steroid leagues or the purists leagues.