This research question interests me on many levels. I grew up loving the sport of baseball. I can honestly say that I developed a passion for the game around the age of 10 and began earnestly following Major League Baseball; after all, they are the best baseball players in the world and many of them became my role models. Baseball in the 90's and early 2000's was power baseball. Long home runs and many of them. Players were hitting the ball harder and farther than any era of baseball prior. Players were also much larger and it wasn't uncommon to see players who looked as if they could have had successful careers in bodybuilding as well. It turns out many players in this era, and still today, greatly benefitted from the effects of performance enhancing drugs (PED's) such as steroids, human growth hormone (HGH), and supplements affecting growth hormone production (such as IGF-1) and the bodies ability to bounce back after injury or overuse. Put concisely, these players cheated to get ahead. Whether getting ahead meant better statistics, making a team, or making more money, players were cheating at alarming rates. Some of the games statistically best players, e.g. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, aided from said supplements and are therefore said to have cheated to attain the careers they had. The question of whether these guys deserve the reverence of being included in the baseball Hall of Fame, full of guys who throughout the years have played and succeeded based on natural skill and ability alone, has stark implications on morals, values, and ethics. Do we reward those who cheated to attain greatness?

 I have personal history with this topic. I was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays out of high school in 2008 and played professionally until 2014. I saw, first hand, friends benefit from PED's.  Pitchers velocities increased significantly over a matter of months out of seemingly nowhere, and hitters were hitting balls farther than they ever had in the past, again, out of nowhere. As pitcher's velocities continue to increase, pitchers who did not take PED's, such as myself, became increasing average as we had hit our physical limits. One thing required to benefit from PED's is natural athletic ability, coordination, and skill. Steroids did not make Barry Bonds more adept at making contact with a baseball, nor did it give Roger Clemens the coordination needed to throw a baseball accurately. If players took PED's just to remain competitive, should they be punished for that? Did the PED's really give players incredible strength or were they just supremely gifted players who aided from quicker recovery? I found three sources to shed a light of empirical data on the topic. 

One, the famous Mitchel Report, was published in 2007 and was the main report used to indict may of the current Major League Baseball players on charges of violating the MLB's drug policy. Throughout the report are anecdotes and testimonies from the strength trainers and various individuals who supplied players with the performance enhancing drugs (PED's), the reasons for which they supplied them, and the effects they had on player performance. Than man commissioned by MLB commissioner Bud Selig was George Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell is a former Senator and lawyer who was tasked by President Clinton in leading a fact-finding investigation into ways to solving the Palestine-Israel conflict. His experience in investigations and legal expertise make him credible. My second source was an experiment on the effects of HGH on athletic performance. The goal was to look into the ambiguity surrounding human growth hormone and its efficacy and safety for athletic performance. Young, lean, fit men were given a range up human growth hormone injections for an average of 20 days. VO2 max and lean muscle max were measured for both the control and experimental group. Although lean muscle mass increases with the experimental group, strength and exercise capacity did not seem to improve. This experiment seemed to lead to more questions than it did answer anything. There are many authors on this topic. Dr. Hau Lui is the lead contributor. He also has his MBA and MPH leading me to believe he is a highly credible individual. Any degree in medicine and public health would require an individual highly capable to experiment and interpret data. My third source was an article written to shed light on a very popular performance enhancing drug of choice -- anything containing IGF-1. One "supplement", Deer Antler Spray, is commonly used by athletes to gain a competitive edge, whether that be getting bigger, faster, stronger, or recovering from injury or overuse quicker. This article also explains how this has been around for quite some time, although it has just recently been added to the banned list of Major League Baseball's banned substance list. The pathways and mechanisms by which IGF-1 works throughout the body is discussed. Tests on animals injected with IGF-1 showed increased muscle mass and, if injured, a quicker recovery time for injured soft tissue. One of the authors, Mary Pilon, is a sports reporter "focused on intersection of sports with business and politics." Making her a knowledgeable figure for this topic. The other, Gina Kolata, studies molecular biology at M.I.T. This alone makes her credible as M.I.T. and molecular biology are extremely challenging. 

This research question is highly arguable. Scientific research is inconclusive about the efficacy of some PED's that have been purported to be popular among MLB players despite the widespread belief among players that it helps greatly. Even while using PED's, hitters still had to make contact with the ball and pitchers still had to have the mechanics and coordination to throw the ball where they wanted to and no drug is going to help with that. The sources I have found have not altered my perspective on the issue. My questions might need to be revised to something slightly more specific, such as if PED users deserve to get in the HOF, or if PED's have any significant affect on a player's performance enough to warrant HOF induction.
