Paul Sommers showed charts over the decades of average years played by an average starter in the pros. It went from 5.2 years in the 60’s to 6 in a half years in 2006. That shows that the use of steroids in the MLB increased a player’s career by almost 2 years. He also explains that the use of PEDs in baseball lets you peak at a higher level of skill. A persons overall skill level will increase by a big number while using steroids. Someone hitting .267 without the use of steroids could jump anywhere from a .324 to .378 average depending on the person. With all the statistics shown throughout the article it’s proven that Performance enhancing drugs increase a player’s batting average, peak, years played, MPH, and overall skill level.
Before the 1960’s after a player’s peak their batting average tended to decline steadily due to falling off from their prime, but after the 1960’s a large amount of players started to excel past their peak year and raise their batting averages past their prime which was unusual. As we know now the reason for that was the use of PEDs. After 2004 the statistics seemed to start trending again like the 1960’s due to the random and mandatory drug tests which disabled the players to partake in using Anabolic Steroids of HGH.
I will be using this information to show how all PEDs have been proven in many to not only better athletes, but make them more durable and tack on extra years of successful productivity past their prime. PEDs aren’t physically making them younger, but they sure are making them produce younger aged stats in a past prime aged body. Stone, Brad. “Another Poison Pill” Newsweek 146.7 (August 15 2005): Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 November 2011.
The MLB is by far the top sport when it comes to the abuse of Performance Enhancing Drugs, but yet it holds the weakest punishment in the sports world for testing positive. Rafael Palmeiro in 2008 tested positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs in early August of 2008 just months after he testified before a U.S congressional committee stating that he had never used PEDs in his life. Not only did he test positive for steroids, he failed the test after lying under oath in a court of law, and all he was punished with through the MLB was a 10-day suspension and a $164,000 fine. Due to the particular steroid Palmeiro took, Stanozonol, which travels through your digestive system within 2 weeks, makes it hard for the court to prove that Palmeiro was lying when he testified.
Baseball wants to stop the abuse of Steroids, but at the same time it seems like all these players that test positive these substances just get slaps on the wrist and are told not to do it again. If you want a problem to come to a halt you have to go the extra distance in order to get the results you’re looking for. PEDs have been persistent in the MLB for decades now; telling a player to stop will ultimately not stop them.
There needs to be an ultimatum put into action to make the abusers consider that these PEDs aren’t worth the loss of their career. Every other sport that has extremely harsh penalties if tested positive for PEDs don’t have a very high percent of positive tests because the players don’t want to take the risk to put their career on the line. In the MLBs case they aren’t putting a severe enough consequence for the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. My main point I’ll be using from this article is that if you want the use of PEDs to lower then you have to put consequences that the players don’t want to deal with out there in order to produce more negative resulting drug tests.
Quinn, Tom “BASEBALL’S STEROID ERA.” Men’s Fitness 23. (August 2007): SPORTSDiscus. Web. 8 November 2011 Throughout the history of baseball testing for either steroids or street drugs really hasn’t been a big part of the games policy. Player’s played the game and what they did off the field was their own business. Once the early 80’s hit, and PEDs came on the scene the use of them among players got out of hand. It became an almost regular regime for a majority of the MLB. Tests were eventually being given, but that didn’t stop the players. When there’s motive to do illegal substances there’s always the backup plan to keep these athletes out of trouble.
There were plenty of ways to come up clean on a test, and when the testers would find a way to stop it, Victor Cante and his crew at BALCO labs would just simply find another way to cheat. Even when the few unlucky players’ get caught all they have to do is admit it and simply explain they were told it was something else. For Example, Barry Bonds, when he spoke in front of the BALCO grand jury he came clean about all the PEDs he had taken, but the catch was he stated that he was oblivious to what he was actually using. People of this stature will make their illegal decisions, but don’t think they don’t have all the answers for when the going gets tough.
I’ll be using Quinn’s article “BASEBALL STEROIDS ERA” to inform how little baseball can really do to not only catch these users, but to actually put a stop to the Performance Enhancing Drugs. If not cheating tests to save their own ass’ these professional athletes will just find a perfect window of time to where they know they won’t be tested in the offseason to fit in a couple cycles here and there to maintain the gains through using PEDs.
Testing companies such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the U.S Anti Doping-Agency (USADA) will never stop trying to improve the efficiency of the tests to make cheating near impossible if not totally full proof, but as those agencies are working to stop the cheaters don’t think the cheaters at BALCO labs aren’t finding ways to break through and find loop holes in their tests. Verhaeghe, Dan. “Bud Selig Lays Down the Hammer on Performance Enhancing Drugs”. Bleacher Report. (January 2008): Web. 30 November 2011