In today's society there is a controversial debate regarding the legalization of steroids in professional baseball. Performance enhancing drugs have long been a banned substance however, now people are curious about the benefits of its legalization. The curiosity of steroids stems from the physical benefits steroids seem to bring, and now more than ever players are jumping at the opportunity to “juice up”, a slang term used for using steroids. People against the legalization of steroids know too well what can happen when players openly use steroids. Too many times Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen great players like Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, and Bartolo Colon ruin their lives over steroid use. From being top players in the league to being booed by fans and sometimes by their own fans, the players who have been caught using steroids suffer from a plethora of problems directly stemming from steroid use. When you take steroids in professional baseball you are labeled a cheater; once you are given that label it sticks with you forever. Since steroids have always been illegal and there are no clear benefits there is no reason to risk legalizing these drugs now, especially during a time where baseball's popularity is at a major crossroads. Along with obvious problem of cheating, steroids need to stay banned from the MLB because they hurt the integrity of the game, create an unfair player field, and are a serious health issue for players; additionally, allowing steroids would force all players to use the drugs. 

Baseball is considered America's most popular pastime when it comes to professional sports and has a long known reputation of being an integrity driven organization. Up until the 1980s most of the players abided by the rules, which helped the sport was thrive and for a long time was the main attraction in America for professional sports. Since baseball has become more focused on biological advancement and producing fascinating statistics, steroids have been more common for athletes. Today's generation is more intrigued by the excitement of the sport and new statistics and changes that conflict with the way the founding fathers of baseball viewed the sport. People in favor of legalizing steroids feel that steroids will not affect the integrity of the sport because every player will have the same advantages as the others. They also believe the change will provide bigger ratings for a sport that has been declining year by year in popularity. More excitement is what the sport needs but cheating is not the answer. Baseball is a sport that a lot of people find beauty in. When played by the rules baseball is one of the most entertaining sports to watch, so why would we risk messing up this great sport by cheating? The most that the MLB has done to prevent steroid use was in 1991 when the MLB finally banned steroids from being used yet players still continued to use the drugs. Star players like Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, and Bartolo Colon all served 50 game suspensions due to testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. This makes the sport look bad to the public that the best players in baseball only got to the top because they were cheating. That's when the sport began to lose popularity in America. The fans and children who look up to the players as role models stopped focusing on them and starting watching players from other sports. Michael Jordan and Joe Montana were the stars in the 1990’s in sports and baseball began to fade. The competition was thriving in the NBA and NFL because players were playing by the rules and they were playing amazingly. They were playing the fair way and earned America’s respect. 

The difficult part about getting players to follow the rules is the allure of steroids because the drugs can actually benefit your performance and make you a better player to make more money. A major part of professional baseball is dealing with soreness and injuries. After every game players are banged up and sore from practicing all week, working out, and playing a dangerous sport. Usually players take painkillers and other pills to numb their pain, which is really unsafe and bad for their health. Steroids can prevent swelling and decrease pain in joints, which is why steroids are so attractive to players. In Health Guidance, the authors explain what the actual health benefits of the drug are: “Among other things the positive effects of steroids include increased muscle mass, tissue repair, endurance and fat loss. Someone who is using steroids will find that they experience greatly exaggerated benefits from their workouts and can inches on their biceps quickly. Someone who is on steroids will experience increased physical performance in all sports and will also appear more physically imposing – these being the main positive effects of steroids in addition to the reason that many athletes and civilians use them” (Mack Lemouse). Steroids can clearly offer some benefits to working out and getting bigger, but in the long run even the experts know that steroids have more side effects and long term effects. According to ABC News, steroids will destroy your career and your life after baseball, “Symptoms will start off with a mania that leads to aggressiveness, reckless behavior and diminished need for sleep -- also known as ‘roid rage.’ Some athletes could actually be seeking this last side effect, as it could lead to motivation to work out harder and a higher level of aggression when playing sports. It is almost always followed by a profound depression that can then lead to suicidal behavior. There is a suspected psychologically addictive aspect to steroid use that leads athletes to become addicted to the way they feel on steroids and the way they look -- possibly leading to continued steroid abuse after their sport-playing days are over ” (ABC News). Clearly these drugs cause brain and body issues, which are extremely unsafe for an athlete to be taking during the prime of their life because their body is at its peak physicality and by adding an unsafe drug to their diet will cause health issues. Measures should be taken to ensure that players are not taking these drugs and if they are they should be punished. To enforce that players shouldn't use steroids the MLB should perform weekly drug tests that can detect any illegal substances. 

Part of the reason steroid consumption is used is because of the confusing list of what is legal vs. what is not. The MLB has a policy where if you ask them MLB if a certain substance they will tell you they cannot answer you because it creates a conflict of interest. This creates a problem where steroids become more common because trainers will give the players substances not knowing they are not on the list and the players gets banned. 

Along with damaging the professionalism of the sport, allowing steroids is also jeopardizing the health of the players. The players are using them to build muscle faster and could get injured as a result. According to Dr. Jarvis in the AMA Journal of Ethics, “steroids are addictive which means those who take them may continue to take them even when side effects become severe or use impacts their life in unwanted ways.” Performance enhancing drugs come along with short-term and long-term side effects. Both affect the players negatively while they are playing and after they retire. Short-term side effects include heart problems, high blood pressure, and stroke. Clearly these side effects would prevent players from performing at the highest level, which is what steroids are advertised to do. If players use steroids constantly enough then the long-term effects began to set it. These include aggression, paranoia, delusions, heart attack, kidney failure, and tumors in the liver. The article from Drugabuse.com continues to explain how steroid use leads to dependency and dependency on the steroids is the same as other drugs like crack and cocaine. The players who use the drug frequently become addicted and their health and well-being spirals out of control. Steroids are the same as any other illegal drug because they can ruin your life. With a league as popular as the MLB there should be no room for steroids. If these drugs were legalized the players would become unhealthy and there would be a serious ethical problem in the MLB

Possible alternatives to the unsettled steroid issue in the MLB are available. Some people, like Chris Smith of Forbes Sports say the financial aspect of baseball would boom if steroids were legalized because every player would perform better and last longer. This could be true, but baseball's popularity is fading so fast that any drastic change made to the sport would increase business. Smith specifically says, “legalizing performance enhancing drugs would help athletes climb even higher. Steroids and doping will help pitchers to throw harder, home runs to go further, cyclists to charge for longer and sprinters to test the very limits of human speed” (Smith). While this is true, the effect of the steroids would last for a very short period of time before the symptoms began to cause actual damage to the player. The long-term effects are even worse and completely not worth the risk. There are other solutions to making the sport more interesting than allowing steroid use. The MLB could allow teams to recruit players from every country and allow them to play for any team. Teams from Central America and South America dominate the World Baseball classic year after year while their players stay in their own countries because of rules not allowing them to play in America. The league is also fading from the reach of the youth. Lacrosse and other faster paced sports are starting to dominate. The long nine-inning game of baseball lasts around three and a half hours compared to a two-hour exciting match of lacrosse. The MLB could shorten the length of games and decrease the use of replay and unnecessary time consumers. The sport still lacks some flare that other sports thrive on. There is no edge to baseball like other sports have because in other sports players have more opportunity to express themselves and connect to the fans. The relationships players have with the fans are crucial to the face of the sport. In sports like football players can wear custom cleats and gear and in basketball players can write anything on their shoes and not be fined or wear custom gear. In baseball you must wear a specific team-wide uniform and follow team rules, which does not allow self-expression. 

There are simple solutions that are harmless to the players and would improve the popularity of the sport. Opening day is one of the most famous traditions in sports yet its ratings never top other sports’ opening nights because there is only one game. If the MLB made opening day a national frenzy like March Madness the ratings would definitely increase. There could be a quadruple header with the best teams in the league battling each other on the first day of the season. By scheduling a multi game opening day that can be watched all day, people would enjoy watching baseball because of the excitement an all day opening day brings. Another way to bring excitement is expanding the league overseas. The NFL and NBA have begun regularly playing games in different countries to expand the global market of the sport and it has been extremely helpful. Some of the best players in the MLB originate from Latin America and Central America, so by playing more games in those countries the MLB could attract more big time players. Also, baseball is the number one sport in Japan and more and more former MLB all-stars have decided to play for Japanese teams. Japan has a huge market and would be a great place to advertise baseball and increase the fan base. Since the MLB is constantly called out for being too old and boring, why not replace the commissioner with a younger, more insightful candidate? According to Clinical Chemistry this change is long overdue, “Innovations such as interleague play and the wild card may offend purists, but their introduction has coincided with incredible revenue growth via increased attendance and rights fees, and the game now enjoys a hard-won labor peace as well as the strongest drug policy in major professional sports. Even so, Selig is 78 years old, and it's time for a younger commissioner to usher in a new era” (Franke Werner). Baseball is too out of touch with modern society so by adding a new, fresh and modern perspective the sport can grow with society to stay relevant and poplar. The main goal for the MLB should be implementing harsher consequences for players who violate the drug policy. Sports Illustrated has some ideas on how to deal with a player who violates the rule, “As a means of bolstering public confidence that players and owners want a cleaner game, the two sides are discussing stronger penalties. At this point, a 100-game ban for a first offense, and a full-season ban for a second one — accompanied by ineligibility for All-Star honors and awards in the season(s) of the suspension — isn't unreasonable”  (Jay Jaffe). This is a clear-cut consequence that all the players would understand and be able to respect because of the repercussions. Adding on to this idea, the MLB could suspend the players without pay when they get suspended to ensure players respect the rules and steroids become irrelevant. Allowing steroids does not have to be the change we make to improve baseball. 

The business side of baseball would suffer even more from steroid use and lose money. The sports industry is a business first and foremost so losing that side of the sport is detrimental to baseball's future. Steroid use would actually be detrimental to organizations funding because players would produce much better numbers, so they would request more money from teams and eventually every player would want too much money and the teams wouldn’t be able to afford all the players. Teams would be struggling to make enough money to afford the players. This is a deadly dynamic where players may look to other countries that can pay them more money to play. We could potentially lose players to countries like Japan and China because of how fast the sport is growing there and how much money they have to offer. Teams could potentially file for bankruptcy and leave the MLB if players are asking for too much money. Why risk major league baseball for a drug that can potentially harm and hurt the player’s production? Steroids are too risky to incorporate into the league right now. 

Today's society is so interested in making sports faster and more entertaining that they forget about the process behind the ways the games have been played forever. Even though professional baseball is in need of a makeover, allowing illegal substances is not the way to make the sport more exciting, especially with the long list of health risks. There are too many downsides to allowing the drugs because they hurt the integrity of the game, create an unfair player field, and are a serious health issue for players; allowing steroids would force all players to use the drugs. By focusing on changing baseball within the rules we can eliminate a debate over drugs and keep baseball clean from steroids and make the sport more exciting through connecting with society and the fans. 
