Every time you look in the paper, or turn on the TV or radio, you hear of another baseball player being linked to steroids or performance enhancing drugs. This makes a lot of pure baseball fans sad, but for me its really not surprising. You have had Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, all be linked to these things. Every athlete is looking to be the next big thing, the next superstar, so should we as a baseball society even be shocked anymore?
A couple of weeks ago a Miami newspaper published
that some more names were linked to PEDS. Alex Rodriguez, Gio Gonzalez, and Nelson Cruz were the names mentioned. Every time this happens it comes with a bunch of denial. Gio Gonzalez's dad was the one who was supposedly in the "anti aging clinic", A-Rod denied it via Twitter blah blah. We as fans just have to be stop being so naive, and take it for whats its worth. Most athletes and baseball players especially are on performance enhancing drugs. Is it fair? Well, yes and no. Its our faults as media, and fans
to put these human beings on such a high pedestal that they have no other option. Its their bodies, and if they want to destroy them by taking drugs who are we to judge them now. Sometimes, I try to put myself in their shoes and try to figure out why these guys put themselves in a situation where they will get caught and chastised. The only answer I can ever come up with is how far would I go to obtain stardom, and be the best at what I do. Well, maybe I'm still being naive but putting illegal substances in my body doesn't seem very entertaining, but I will never know what these guys go through.
When baseball writers go and publicly humiliate these players its kind of sad in a way. The players have worked since a young age to get to where they are, and in an instance it could all be for not. These guys sometimes have no choice but to use the new and hidden drug to gain that edge that they may have lost. They still want to be the best, they want to play forever, and they want to be wanted by media and fans. Its selfish to us, but in the end its their choice. This thing is not going to go away, its here to stay. For me, who loves the old time baseball of Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle, will be sad that I will have to write and tell my kids that most of there heroes will be fakes and cheaters.
With that said, I hope the future of baseball and any sport for that matter will get a handle on all of this. Future players will have to be bigger, and faster, and have to get an edge somewhere. That somewhere will probably be steroids and other PEDS, but its my hope there are some kids right now will just work hard with the God given talent they were given, and strive to be the best. Baseball is a great sport, one if you look back in history you don't need to be a physical specimen that came from a lab. You can be great as a pot belly pitcher, or a skinny power hitter. Its my hope and prayer that baseball will go back to what it was 50 or 60 years ago. A place where we can go for an escape, and watch true clean athletes playing the awesome game of baseball. When I say clean I mean free of steroids. So to end this is it fair to think all players are on PEDS? The answer has to be sadly, a YES. Fair or not, we all just have to come to terms that they are, and that we can all hope for change.
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