Out of the Ballpark

The sporting world within Major League Baseball has been overshadowed by the cloud of steroid use and suspicion for decades. Records broken during the steroid era have been tainted in the minds of fans across the country. Each major statistical feat that has been accomplished ever since the surge in suspicion in the 1990s has been devalued with the possibility of performance enhancers playing a role. Fans simply have been unable to know for certain whether their favorite players have dabbled with a banned substance. The purity of the game has been diminished and the backlash from the Game’s continued oversight on the problem has produced the delayed formation of what is now the toughest drug testing program in American professional sports.

                The current testing program was amended this past January. It was only days after the Hall of Fame voters were given the opportunity to turn down steroid era poster boys Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in the 2013 Hall of Fame inductions. Professional ballplayers are now subject to in season blood tests for Human Growth Hormone (HGH) along with the other substances previously listed on the banned substance list. This new step into HGH testing is something to note in part because it is still not seen even in the National Football League.  

                The steroid era officially came to a close over a decade ago when the preliminary attempts at a drug policy were put into action. It was a reactionary measure to the aforementioned backlash from a consumer fan base that was gradually turning away from the juiced up product on the field. Steroid testing developed a search for offenders that resembled a modern day witch hunt. The media has put a lot of the blame on the players that were caught cheating, while allowing the owners to skate by unharmed and outside of the spotlight. The role that the players played in their own demise should by no means be overlooked. However as Dave Zirin explains in his book “Bad Sports,” Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners were allowed to plead ignorance. For the player’s numbers to inflate with their arms and head at such a rapid pace and the Owners that pay them to not realize it; speaks to either stupidity or indifference. No matter the case this should be seen as a multilevel organizational concern and not one reserved for the players.

                The fact that these performance enhancing drugs do not have a place in the game is not up for debate. Anything that disrupts the competitive balance to this magnitude has to be driven out for the sport to ultimately flourish. In the end this epidemic that the game is still recovering from speaks to the greed of players and owners alike. The players were motivated by success on the field and the owners were willing to let that happen because of the success off of it. Fans want to pay for the real thing though and baseball is at last willing to respond. As players are forced to react, one would hope that those behind the scenes look in the mirror and see their role as well.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/sports/baseball/baseball-and-union-agree-to-in-season-blood-testing-for-hgh.html?_r=0

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/01/10/major-league-baseball-expand-drug-testing-program/DxnaETsL8AzMDwPp5A4j9M/story.html

 

Zirin, Dave. Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love. New York: Scribner, 2010