The Steroid Dilemma

Steroids!?! Dun Dun Duh…Oh no! Another article on steroids! Relax I’m not naming names, and I try to stay away from things like “probes” but let’s hash out some problems we as fans have with steroids, the players who use them, those who don’t, and the media who likes to talk about it.

Now steroids or anabolic steroids to be exact are a form of treatment for multiple ailments, which also happen to have a side effect found favorable amongst the athletic crowd, or your friendly neighborhood bouncer. This side effect is an increase in muscle mass. Muscles are the symbol of power in the modern world. The bigger the muscle the more power one has. Increase the muscle increase the power increase one’s self worth. Sounds like a sweet deal except this method of self improvement has multiple adverse effects, which is why steroids are a controlled substance, and banned from professional sports.

With all the unknowns and dangers of steroids you’d think that would be enough to deter a sensible human being from taking them, but if all humans were sensible we wouldn’t have crack heads and monogamous marriages. So why do people take them? Do the risks outweigh the rewards? In my strictly nonprofessional unbiased and completely lacking any medical knowledge opinion I’d say maybe. For your average Joe who wants to impress the Silicone Sally’s on Muscle Beach it’s probably a very bad idea, but for a middling professional athlete, who can make hundreds of millions of dollars by taking a shot… it sure sounds like a sweet deal. How about that poor city kid who wants to go to college? He’s an above average athlete looking for the right edge to get into that fancy private college where his life will be changed forever. A shot can make the cost of that dream $0. I have never personally used steroids, but I’ve never been presented with the ethical decision of illegally obtaining an advantage over my peers, for that big of a payoff. Even thinking of a similar scenario an average person may face is a difficult task, but I did it anyway.
Let’s say you work for a competitive fortune 500 company. There are probably layoffs, relocation, and outsourcing happening all the time. You have your year end review fast approaching and an office wide deadline has been placed on the big project. Johnson from the tech group comes over and says, “Psst, hey man I have this new macro it’s still in testing and isn’t approved by the company, but if you use it you’ll get those TPS reports done in no time and nail that deadline.” You think to yourself, “Hey if I use this I’ll not only get results easier and quicker, but I’ll probably impress enough to get a big payoff on my review.” Then you consider how it may back fire, because after all it isn’t accepted company policy. When you approach Johnson with your concern he simply says, “Your loss man half the office is doing it you’ll be left in the dust.” You weigh your options and figure the immediate payoff is worthwhile; you’ll finish the job, make some more money and avoid that relocation to India! Sure enough the project is completed in record time, your manager takes notice and rewards you with a hefty raise. Two months later Johnson is in the doghouse for faulty macros that cause errors down the road. He starts naming names and it comes out that all that hard work you put in was actually do to a slight advantage you and a few others had. That immediate payoff was nice at the time, but now you realize the cost was not only your integrity, but also the integrity of the company and coworkers you were hired to represent. Then you think how if you just came in earlier worked later, and maybe even sacrificed a Saturday morning maybe this all could have been avoided, and you could have nailed that promotion anyway…

What I’m concluding from these ramblings is that human nature will always seek out that advantage legal or not. Just because a player has muscles and is physically strong does not make him immune to temptation. In my above scenario the employee was wrong to take advantage of a fallible macro, but the company put an end to it. If that company continued to let that macro run its course knowing it was faster even though errors were inevitable wouldn’t they be even more to blame for the problem? Don’t they have the responsibility to right the wrongs of their employees, so the customer is given the best available product? Shouldn’t it be the company’s policy to award the hard working individuals and put and end to cutting corners?

This is the position MLB is in. They as an establishment are all guilty of looking a blind eye at the problem of steroids. Everyone in this era from Bud Selig to Cal Ripken to Sammy Sosa and anyone who’s donned a uniform or received a paycheck from a ball club is guilty. These people belong to a time honored American pastime, and they allowed it to be overrun by selfishness. They have an obligation to the fan to reinstate the integrity of the league. Some will cry for a witch hunt and names, but if no individual is bigger than a team how can some individuals be bigger than the league? Let’s face it as humans we vary on every ethical question to both extremes. Players will always use, but the roles of the other people around the league, and the Medias view have to change. It's an imprtant reminder that the longer this continues unashamedly in the Pros more and more amatuers will take the steroid train to funky town, and for every million dollar athlete spending thousands of dollars on a specially designed cocktail there are hundreds of kids taking whatever they can get their hands on.

News outlets have to stop with the sensationalizing of the “Name” stop with the scandal and start with the solution. Focus on the people responsible for restoring the integrity of the league. Stop focusing on those that lacked the intestinal fortitude to say no to steroids, and start demanding a better job from those in charge that allowed it to continue. Players need to look beyond their fraternal bond and see the greater harm that is being done. Finally the commissioner’s office and baseball in general need to apologize for the way things have spiraled out of control, and try to regain the faith of the average fan by offering a clean product driven not by greed and selfishness, but by a general love of the game.

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