Steroids In Baseball

The first time steroids were ever used was in 1954 at the World Weightlifting Championships ("Steroids in Sports", 2012). The Soviets made such an impact that a team physician from the United States questioned the Soviet doctor and the doctor said the team had been receiving injections of testosterone. As for baseball, steroids started because of a bottle of nutritional supplement that was seen in Mark McGwire's locker. "Major league baseball was the last major sports organization in the United States to implement a comprehensive drug testing policy," ("Steroids in Sports", 2012). It has been said that steroids are more of an ethical issue than anything else. There are more negatives than positives to steroids, and many of the positives are only positive to the athletes themselves. 

            There are more cons then pros when it comes to taking steroids in any sport, specifically focusing on baseball here. In 2007, The Owlcroft Company made a website that discussed the four categories of ethical arguments for and against PED use. The four "separable but sometimes overlapping categories" include:

            Harm and coercion - this category is self-explainable; the meaning of harm in and of itself is Physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted. Coercion is essentially the overwhelming of the will of another by force or threat of force, or through less noticeable forms such as fraud. The use of coercion is the means by which a person or group of people impose their will upon another or others. (Coercion can also be used to forcibly or fraudulently take the property of others.) Ayn Rand made the crucial qualification of the initiation of force or the threat of force. As long as an individual has done nothing to harm others or violate another's rights, no one has the right to initiate force or the threat of force against that individual.  A distinction needs to be made between initiated force, and force used in self-defense. You are quite justified in using force, threat of force, bluff, deception, etc., to prevent others from coercing you. (Though you need to decide for yourself if, depending on the circumstances, it would be worth the risk of being harmed more by resisting someone's attempt to coerce you.) The steroids create unacceptable risks of harm and they force other athletes to take them.  If a certain athlete is using steroids to enhance their performance, then other athletes may feel the need to take them so they are able to compete on a level playing field, therefore not being at any type of disadvantage.

            Moral boundaries - this is the argument of "natural" vs. "unnatural".  In defining morals - A person's standard of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do, when relating it to the use of steroids in baseball, it is always difficult to decide what substances will be allowed and which will not, an even more difficult to maintain it in practice.

            Coherence - as defined as a property holding for two or more waves or fields when each individual wave or field is in phase with every other one.  According to The Owlcroft Company, "Coherence arguments address issues of whether or not an action is consistent with our idea or understanding of the 'essence' of an endeavor or phenomenon."

            Normative systems ("Surveying the Ethics Field", 2007) - defined as Normative systems have been defined as sets of constraints on the behavior of agents in a system.  Some examples of normative systems include corporate governance, legal and access-control systems, firewalls, and business application logic. There have been many attempts to translate normative systems into logic.  If these methods were applied to laws, they would possibly improve the certainty of the law in addition to the ability to validate decisions.  As it pertains to the sport of baseball, it has to do with the moral rules that exist in societies and whether or not it helps or hurts the faithfulness to those certain beliefs.

            Dr. Charles E. Yasalis, also mentioned in "Surveying the Ethics Field", is one of the nation's best-known experts on steroids in sports. His points agree with the four categories previously mentioned. Dr. Yasalis says that the use of steroids can cause physical or psychological harm, coherence to other athletes, an unfair advantage over other athletes, and any resulting successes is due to external factors, therefore making it unnatural (Surveying the Ethics Field, 2007).

            A practicing pediatrician and a widely recognized expert in medical ethics, Norman Frost, analyze a number of commonly made claims about PED use in this article ("Surveying the Ethics Field", 2007). He does not say whether they are bad or ok, rather he says that some myths and ideas are not true. The first claim is that steroids are unfair competition. Dr. Frost says that there is no evidence to support that performance enhancers are unfair. He makes the point that coaching and training enhance athlete’s performance and if they were unfair, they would be banned. Frost thinks that the claim "steroids cause life-threatening harms" is over exaggerated and he thinks that it is "hysterical" that people say they are testing for steroids because they are concerned about the athlete’s health. Another claim is that steroids are unnatural and they undermine the essence of a sport and he brings up the point that since the beginning of sports, athletes have used many different assists to enhance their performance. Examples of these assists as stated in the article are springy shoes, greasy swimsuits, bamboo poles, and endless chemicals. Dr. Frost also discuss' claims about the integrity of records, the lost interest of fans, and how steroids are bad for the sake of role modeling.

            The consumption of steroids or other performance enhancers is definitely an ethical and trust issue for fans. Deborah Small, a Wharton marketing professor who studies biases in consumer behavior says, "Psychological research has demonstrated again and again that people are egocentric," (Knowledge Wharton, 2008). By egocentric, she means that people have little or no regard for interests, beliefs, or attitudes other than their own. In this same article she discuss' how people are bias to everything, and they see things how they want to see them. "Because of this prior commitment to a team or a player, conflicting information--that the player cheats or is not as skilled as he or she appears, for example-- creates cognitive dissonance," says Maurice Schweitzer, a Wharton professor who studies issues of trust and deception (Knowledge Wharton, 2008). She uses Barry Bonds as an example. If someone sees Bonds as a hero and they have a very positive belief about him and then they find out he was using steroids later on, they will do one of a few things. They will think he is cheater and liar and they will lose trust in him, but that is a difficult switch to make if they see Bonds as a hero. They will say the evidence is not true and choose to ignore the story. This argument goes back to Norman Frost's argument about the claim "lost interest of fans." If the athlete cares about what his/her fans think, then using enhancers is definitely a "con".

            Do steroids actually cause baseball to lose value? "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? (Knowledge Wharton, 2008). Even if fans do not agree with their favorite athletes taking performance enhancers, they still go to games to watch good baseball. So would this be a pro or a con to steroids in baseball? A pro, because it is helping the MLB and professional baseball players, even though it is such an ethical issue.

            A Bleacher Report on multiple sports discuss' how everyone is just "obsessed with winning" and it is an ethical dilemma. "Today, everyone is obsessed and primarily concerned with their ends (being winning) and not their means (how they achieve their ends)" (Rowe, 2009). Michelle Rowe, the author of the article "Obsessed with Winning: An Ethical Dilemma", explains how stats are important because that is what determines the athletes salaries. It is all about the money now and it is very unlikely that someone plays a sport, like baseball, just because they love it. Who wants to make 2.5 million when they can make 3 million, while using steroids (Rowe,)? Rowe thinks, "The ethical dilemma is we all want to win and we want that instant gratification without the work and time required to do so." Therefore, steroids are a pro for the athletes themselves, because they definitely raise their salaries, but they are also a con because they are cheating there way to raising their salary and if they have any integrity at all, this would be a problem.

            An article on steroids from the New York Times talks about the positives and negatives of steroids on your body. They can help an athlete build bigger muscles faster which builds strength and stamina, yet they risk infertility, psychological changes, and cancer. In 2003, baseball tested for steroids for the first time. Approximately 100 players tested positive and the penalty for a first offense was treatment (Steroids, 2009). "The List" is what the first group of athletes that tested positive has come to be known to fans and people in baseball. Some of these athletes include Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, and David Ortiz. These names were supposed to be kept anonymous, but they were never destroyed and were eventually leaked.

            Rick Helling, a right-handed pitcher for the Texas Rangers, was the one who announced the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. "The Man Who Warned Baseball about Steroids," by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci, explains how many more people were watching baseball and why!  Attendance increased 12 percent with about seven and a half million more people going to ballparks to watch (Torre, 2009). The 1998 baseball season was one that was said to belong to hitters, who were hitting baseballs to places they have never been hit before. "It was a freak show and baseball loved it. It was the first season in history in which four players hit 50 home runs," (Torre, 2009). Mark McGwire's forearms were 17 inches in diameter; the size of a grown man's neck and MLB ballparks opened their gates early so thousands of fans could watch him in batting practice. Rick Helling stood up at the winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players Association to tell everyone that steroids were corrupting the game. Helling said, "It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressured to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up," (Torre, 2009). Nevertheless, the union turned their cheek and pretended as if Helling never said anything because they were making too much money to care. This was a problem, and a reason that steroids got so out of hand.

            A Bleacher Report by Bill Mckillop compares NFL's use of steroids and the use of the drug by an Olympic Sprinter to the use of steroids in MLB. Ben Johnson, an Olympic Sprinter, was stripped of his gold medals in 1988 when he was caught using steroids. Then, in 1989, the NFL began testing, and busting, athletes for steroids. Lyle Alzado, an NFL player, died in May 1992 and had previously admitted to taking anabolic steroids in 1969, and never stopping (Mckilliop, 2009). So what does this have to do with baseball? You would think these events would have opened someone's eyes that steroids were a serious problem. "If they were considered illegal in 1991 what took new commissioner Bud Selig till the 'confidential' test of 2003 to pilot steroid testing? It was not until 2005 after Selig and Fehr had to go before Congress that MLB really had a true testing Policy in place," (Mckillop, 2009).

            So who is to blame for the use of performance enhancers and letting baseball sink into this ethical issue? "Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades-- commissioners, club officials, the players' association and players-- shares to some extent the responsibility for the Steroids Era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on," (Knowledge Wharton, 2008). I believe that the union of Major League Baseball is fully responsible for letting performance enhancers be used. They were more interested in getting people to watch baseball and making money, then the safety and fairness of the players. Bud Selig should take a lot of responsibility for ignoring society and ignoring the future issue. "Bud Selig had no problem with his $18 million dollar salary for fiscal 2007 so he should be a man and take the good with the bad," (Mckillop, 2009). Yes, the athletes were at fault for using the drugs and cheating their way to fame, but the Major League Baseball Association were the ones who ignored it in the beginning and let it get to the point where hundreds of players were using the drug.