Call me pessimistic. Maybe that's because I'm a lifelong Cleveland fan or the fact that I've played sports and knew some of my fellow teammates in High School and in College that weren't approaching the game from the same level playing field that I was. Whatever the case, I look at this whole Major League Baseball steroid quagmire as if the glass was half empty.
Over the last couple of years, names of baseball players have surfaced in an ongoing investigation to try and cleanse the sport of performance enhancing drugs for good. Names like Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Jason Grimsley, David Bell, Gary Matthews Jr., John Rocker, Gary Sheffield, the late Ken Caminiti, and many more have been either accused of juicing it up, been caught cheating, been linked to drug purchases, or have flat out admitted in front of feds that they have taken performance enhancing drugs.
At this point, not one player in Major League Baseball would surprise me if they were revealed in those talks as someone who has been attached to performance enhancers and I believe the sort of claims from Ken Caminiti in the past that more than half the players in the league are using drugs like HGH, and other crazy drugs to enhance their performance on the baseball field. In fact, I wouldn't doubt it if 75% percent of baseball players have fooled around with some sort of substance to improve their game at some point during their careers.
Knowing how competitive sports can be, why would you even doubt such a claim? Sports in America is an infatuation among the masses. A good chunk of parents in this country dream of seeing their children becoming the next great baseball, hockey, football, or basketball player. It shows too when parents at little league games and other sporting events start acting like complete scumbags when they feel their children aren't getting their 'fair' shot on the playing field.
And when parents aren't pushing the hell out of their children to become great athletes, the kids themselves are getting all caught up in the whole macho aspect of the game. Being a good football player can get you chicks and make you cool right?
It doesn't stop there. Professional athletes are ambitious, dedicated individuals who got to their level by sacrificing and being gifted at what they do. Part of what made them so dedicated to their particular sport had to do with their competitiveness and if these guys find out that others are getting a leg up on them with performance enhancing drugs, a good chunk of them will put the moral dilemma aside just to ensure they raise their level of play in the process.
So ultimately, the problem lies much, much deeper than just in the MLB. Professional athletes make a ton of money, and even if you don't make it to that level, being a damn good athlete is the next best thing to being a movie star. And while drugs are available to help you enhance your position in whatever sport you play, many players will give in and join the club of performance enhancers.
While sports as a whole has been flawed in this respect, Major League Baseball has been front and center in this whole process to try and weed out a Nationwide epidemic. Never mind the fact that football is most likely worse than baseball when it comes to players taking performance enhancers at different levels. The reality is that baseball has and always will be the sport that will be put on the pedestal in this country when it comes to finding all that is wrong with sports in general. While baseball may be fading from young people's minds as the true National Pastime, it continues to be the lightning rod for everything that is wrong with professional sports.
That's why the added focus on this sport will soon prove to expose many players that you and I have admired at some point in time.
So while some try to give baseball players the benefit of the doubt when it comes to labeling them as pill poppers and steroid shooters during the current "Witch Hunt" (as Gary Sheffield put it so 'eloquently'), lets remember that our society in general has allowed sports to be tainted by drugs over the last many decades. While we certainly feel that what they're doing is wrong, the sports' landscape as a whole hasn't been able to shake the stigma of using drugs as a means to improve your standing in a world where everyone is trying to find a way to get a leg up on their competition. As long as this crap is around, players are going to use it
