Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Baseball

In this paper I shall argue that the use of performance-enhancing drugs, specifically steroids, in the game of baseball is morally wrong. In support of my thesis, I shall examine the interviews of current and former Major League Baseball players and managers in Howard Bryant's book Juicing the Game. Also, I will incorporate the ideas of prominent sports writers George F. Will and Will Carroll, whose articles will further describe the glaring steroid problem in baseball as well as why players and fans should be concerned. In order to develop my position, I shall first discuss how the harmfulness of steroids to the user provides a moral argument against steroids. Then, I will evaluate how the use of steroids by players harms others, namely fellow players and fans. Finally, I will explain the effects that the immoral act of using performance-enhancing drugs is having, and will have, on the game of baseball.

One argument for the immorality of steroid use in baseball is the argument that self harm is immoral. Beyond any possible benefits of steroid use lies the dangerous issue of health. In many cases, athletes (especially young athletes) are so focused on success in a professional sport that they are ignoring the glaring consequences of steroid use. In actuality, the price of steroid use and abuse is high, much higher a price than any lucrative contract or marketing deal.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that heart attacks, strokes, and live cancer are the more serious life-threatening effects of steroid abuse. Side effects for male users include acne, hair-loss, development of breasts, shrinking testicles, and impotence.[1] Former Major League Baseball National League MVP Ken Caminiti, who admitted to using steroids during his MVP season, explained to Sports Illustrated that he had used steroids so heavily in 1996 that by the end of the season, his testicles shrank and retracted. Doctors told Caminiti that his body had all but stopped producing testosterone and that his level of the hormone had fallen to 20% of normal.[2] Yet another way in which steroids harm the user is through increased susceptibility to injuries. One theory is that players are overwhelming their bodies with rapid muscle growth. "The use of anabolic steroids has been shown to cause more injuries - ligament injuries and tendon injuries - which is what we're seeing more of," stated San Francisco Giants trainer Stan Conte.[3]

Persistent steroid use affects more than a player's muscles. The term "roid rage" was coined to describe the uncontrollable mood swings that coincide with steroid use. Other psychological problems include irritability, aggression, and paranoia.[4] Similar to the psychological problems are the problems of the conscience. From an ethical/moral standpoint, players who use steroids are cheating and living a lie, garnering success and prospering from illegal substances. Users who buy into Machiavelli's "ends justify the means" theory go against society's standards of rewarding hard-work and discipline. This is a harm that reaches far beyond one's body, into one's soul. It is morally wrong to cheat for a living.

Those who oppose the illegality and immorality of performance-enhancing drugs maintain that professional athletes should have the right to use steroids because steroids are no different from any other technology or substance that enables athletes to compete at high levels.[5] Technology is considered to be types of equipment, or other things of that nature. One's body is not a piece of equipment that can be used, abused, and replaced. An increase in technology cannot act in place of hard-work and natural talent. Steroids can.

Aside from personal harm to the user, steroid use is detrimental to fellow players, as well as fans. While performance-enhancing drugs enhance an athlete's skill sets, they devalue and alter competition. This is where the argument for the use of steroids in accordance with John Stuart Mill's right to self-determination, which states that "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others", becomes invalid.[6] Mill's notion, along with an individual's right to privacy and personal choice (what one puts into his/her body is his/her business) are used as arguments against any attempt to deter baseball players from using steroids. While these "rights" are applicable to many life situations, they are inapplicable in this instance. Players who use steroids to gain a competitive advantage over peers and opponents pressure others to use performance-enhancing substances. If they too want to win and remain competitive, they must use steroids as well. In baseball, as with all professional sports, income, fame, and marketability depend on success and impressive feats of athleticism.

In an interview printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a Major League Baseball player, who requested anonymity because he considered using steroids, attested to pressure felt throughout the game to be bigger and stronger. In the same interview, the player remarked that "The pressure is indirect. It comes twice a month, on paydays. The big money goes to guys who hit 30 homers, not the ones who hit 30 doubles. It pays to be strong. It's almost like an animalistic behavior. Only the strongest survive."[7] In addition, non-cheating players are forced to play under the cloud of suspicion that their achievements are tainted. This devalues all statistics and accomplishments during the "juiced era".

The pressure and increased incentive to "bulk up" is evident. The average size of a major-league player was a pretty standard 6-foot-1, 185 pounds for at least 30 years, until the early 1990s. Today, the average player is 6-foot-1, 200 pounds, and most teams have players who weigh in at 240 pounds or more.[8] Bigger players hit more home runs and sign lucrative contracts and endorsement deals. Because of this, more players want to be bigger. Aforementioned Giants' trainer Stan Conte describes numerous conversations he had with players during the off-season, saying he heard from several former Giants players who wanted to know if there was a safe way to use steroids. Said Conte, "I ask them why they would even consider it, and what I'm hearing is, 'For me to be able to compete, I have to be on the same stuff as the guy next to me.' That's a real dangerous situation."[9] Consider a situation where a career minor-league player is stuck between the minor-league system and the major-leagues, possessing the skills to be a talented minor-league player, but hard-pressed to make an impact at the major-league level. The marginal player knows that some of the players he is competing against for a roster spot and playing time are using illegal chemicals to enhance their skills. He is put in the position of deciding whether to risk his health or be relegated back to the minor-leagues.

Problems relating to the use of steroids are not restricted to professional baseball players. For many high school and college baseball players, professional players are key influences. They are role models and sometimes even mentors. Countless numbers of young athletes choose the same jersey numbers as their role models, both as homage and an aspiration. The iconic status of elite athletes in American society gives them great influence over young people. This emulation extends from on the playing field to the training facilities. Because of this emulation, it is quite feasible to assume that young athletes believe that use of performance-enhancing drugs by professional players (the so-called role models) gives them a valid reason to use similar substances. Steroids are seen as something that must be incorporated into an athlete's regimen in order to achieve elite status. While high school and college coaches encourage adolescent athletes to lift weights and eat right to enhance the body's normal functioning in a natural, controlled manner, nothing can compare to the results yielded by the chemical means of developing one's body. Most importantly, the health risks to young athletes are more severe because of the natural physiological transition of the body, as steroids are known to interfere with, and oftentimes stunt, adolescent growth. To stress the seriousness of this issue, recent studies have shown as much as a 60% increase in steroid use among high school athletes, at the same time professional use is said to be pervasive.[10]

Frequently, public appearances by admitted steroid users are further detrimental to the attempts to dissuade young athletes from using steroids. Greg Schwab, the associate principal of Tigard High School in Tigard, Oregon and himself a former steroid user, explained to the U.S. Senate in a subcommittee hearing the difficulties he faced as a football coach when his players inquired about steroid use. When asked about steroids, Schwab told his players that as a college football player, he used steroids for two-and-a-half years. Instead of sending a warning message to his young athletes, Schwab felt that his personal testaments to his players showed them someone who used steroids and turned out fine.[11] Schwab is no doubt being honest in his statements to his players, but it leaves the young athletes with the thought that if nothing bad happened to their coach, then nothing bad will happen to them. Similarly, in instances where athletes have admitted to using steroids (previously mentioned Ken Caminiti, former Oakland Athletics slugger Jose Canseco, among others) the message sent is not necessarily one of deterrence. They too turned out fine and enjoyed very profitable and successful professional careers. Denise Garibaldi, whose son Rob, a former college baseball player at the University of Southern California, committed suicide after using steroids, said "tell-all" interviews from athletes like Caminiti and Canseco are full of lies and suggest that steroid use is OK as long as you're an adult and know what you're doing.[12] Whether it is desirable for athletes or not, they are role models and if the harm caused to their bodies is not enough to deter them from using steroids, the well-being of adolescent athletes should be. Rep. Tom Davis, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform best sums up the impact steroid use has on young players, declaring "College athletes believe they have to consider steroids if they're going to make it to the pros; high school athletes, in turn, think steroids are the key to getting a scholarship. It's time to break that vicious cycle, and it needs to happen from the top down."[13]

The use of steroids is continuing to plague baseball. Since the late 1990s, questions about legitimacy of statistics and record-breaking performances have continued to increase. For example, the Major League Baseball record for most home runs in a season (sixty-one) lasted for thirty-seven seasons before Mark McGwire broke the record in 1998. His record endured a mere three years before it was shattered by Barry Bonds. Above all others, this awe-inspiring achievement opened up speculation that the use of performance-enhancing drugs played a role in these performances. Baseball historians and avid followers of the game point out that baseball is a game with a rich historical heritage, in which players and teams have all played "the same game" through different eras, thus enabling accurate qualitative comparisons of player performance between different eras. This is possible because until recently, only one radical change has altered the game's continuity, the transition between the "dead ball" and "live ball" eras. The "live ball" era was a short-term altering of the ball which resulted in increased offensive numbers.[14] Now, baseball is entering what is being called the "juiced era", where the speculation of steroid use threatens to destroy the sacred connection between baseball stars of the past and present.

Sports historians are not the only group who connect steroids with record-breaking performances and the subsequent harm to the integrity of baseball. In a survey of 568 players, 79 percent said they believed steroids played some role in record-breaking performances by high-profile players. And 27 percent said they believed the illegal performance-enhancing drugs were a "major contributor" to recent statistical achievements.[15] Fans too are skeptical. A March 2005 survey of baseball fans found that 82 percent of respondents believe the use of steroids calls into question several baseball records, while 40 percent of those surveyed said that the increased knowledge about steroid use in baseball has weakened their opinion of the game.[16] It is difficult to see how a sport can continue to thrive when any significant achievements by players are devalued by the prospect of steroid use.

Besides cheapening statistics and athletic accomplishments, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has tarnished the general image of baseball. Instead of a game that encourages healthy competition, it is one that resembles a pharmacological trade show, where the effects of steroids are put on display.[17] Baseball is known as "America's pastime". It holds a special place in American society. The values of society are reflected in the values of its most popular and revered cultural pastimes. When the message is sent that it is acceptable to have a drug problem in sport, it is akin to saying that this staple of American culture is reflective of a drug problem in society. Some would argue that baseball is a reflection of a culture mired in drugs and a society that is lacking quality role models for its youth. One of the biggest blows to baseball's image came in August 2005 when slugger Rafael Palmeiro, who has collected over 3,000 hits and has hit nearly 600 home runs during his career, tested positive for steroids. The former first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles booed relentlessly and was told by the team after the season he would no longer be part of the team. Palmeiro is since retired; his hall-of-fame numbers are still in question.

As we have seen, the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, specifically baseball, is an immoral practice. In support of my position, I called upon works from prominent sports writers George F. Will, Howard Bryant, and Will Carroll. First, I examined how steroids harm the individual user, physically, psychologically, and socially. Next, I evaluated how steroids have a detrimental effect on non-using players (mainly added pressures to use) as well as baseball fans, who idolize baseball greats. Last, I explained how steroid use is ruining the game of baseball by devaluing statistics, the "lifeblood" of the game, as well as questioning the driving force behind a player's success. Drug testing baseball players can not be foolproof. In fact, all the testing does is keep players from using optimal dosages and encourage them to find ways to mask the drugs. The only infallible test for steroid use is a player's moral compass. As soon as players identify not using steroids as a moral obligation, for both personal reasons and beyond, the game of baseball and its once-great warriors will return to the apex of the sporting world.

[1] West, Doug. "Steroid Abuse -- Getting Bigger." Youthculture@Today Fall (2002): 20-24.

[2] Verducci, Tom. "Totally Juiced." Sports Illustrated 3 June 2002: 34.

[3] Fletcher, Jeff. "Bulking Up May Be Hurting Stars as Much as It's Helping." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 19 May 2002.

[4] West, Doug. "Steroid Abuse -- Getting Bigger." Youthculture@Today Fall (2002): 20-24.

[5] Gendin, Sidney. "Let's Ban Those Who Don't Use Drugs." MESO-Rx. 2000. 10 Apr. 2006 .

[6] "Harm Principle." Wikipedia. 28 Mar. 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 13 Apr. 2006 .

[7] Fletcher, Jeff. "Bulking Up May Be Hurting Stars as Much as It's Helping." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 19 May 2002.

[8] Fletcher, Jeff. "Bulking Up May Be Hurting Stars as Much as It's Helping." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 19 May 2002.

[9] Fletcher, Jeff. "Bulking Up May Be Hurting Stars as Much as It's Helping." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 19 May 2002.

[10] Schwab, Greg. "Steroid Use Among High School Athletes is a Growing Problem." Steroids. San Diego: Thomson Gale, 2006. 35-38.

[11] Schwab, Greg. "Steroid Use Among High School Athletes is a Growing Problem." Steroids. San Diego: Thomson Gale, 2006. 35-38.

[12] Porteus, Liza, and Sharon K. Liss. "Players: Bad Apples Ruining Baseball's Rep." Fox News. 18 Mar. 2005. Fox News Network, LLC. 21 Mar. 2006 .

[13] Jenkins, Chris. "Players Admit Steroids Changed Baseball." USA Today 15 Mar. 2005.

[14] Will, George F. "Steroids Scandal is Damaging to Baseball." Conservative Chronicle (2004): 25.

[15] Jenkins, Chris. "Players Admit Steroids Changed Baseball." USA Today 15 Mar. 2005.

[16] Egendorf, Laura K. Steroids. San Diego: Thomson Gale, 2006. 7-9.

[17] Hubbard, Alan. "Steroids Cast a Shadow Over the Ballparks." The London Independent 9 June 2002.