Baseball in the 90's and early 2000's was power baseball; throughout this decade there were long home runs, and many of them. Players hit the ball harder and farther than any era of baseball prior. Players also became much larger and it was not 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 cheated 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 guys caught using PED's deserve the reverence of being included in the baseball Hall of Fame, which is full of guys who have played and succeeded based on natural skill and ability alone, has strong 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. 

The famous Mitchel Report, published in 2007, was the main report used to indict many 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 (PEDs), the reasons for which they supplied them, and the effects they had on player performance. The man placed in charge 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 is an experiment on the effects of HGH on athletic performance. The experiment looked 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 increased 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. Many authors contributed to this paper; however, Dr. Hau Lui is the lead contributor. Dr. Lui has a Medical Degree as well as a Degree in Public Health, leading me to believe he is a highly credible individual. A degree in medicine and public health would render an individual highly capable to perform experiments, collect, and interpret data. 

My third source is in 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, studied molecular biology at M.I.T. Besides the impressive degree from an even more impressive school, Mrs. Kolata has the background to be a reliable source on anything science. She has written several books on the science of dieting, and she has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice.

This research question is highly arguable. Scientific research is inconclusive about the efficacy of some of the PEDs that have been purported to be popular among MLB players despite the widespread belief among players that the drugs improve performance and recovery. Even while using PEDs, hitters still had to make contact with the ball and pitchers still had to have the proper mechanics and athleticism 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 PEDs have any significant affect on a baseball player's performance.

