Steroids should be legal in baseball

    It is April. The birds are chirping, the sun is coming out, and summer will be here shortly. This is my favorite time of the year, because this is the time when old men wearing heavy black chest protectors remove their face masks and yell “Play Ball.” Major League Baseball is now in full swing after an off-season that was marred by a steroid witch hunt on Capital Hill.
    Very rarely do I get the chance to write a political editorial that involves my favorite sport, baseball, but with all the hysteria the last few years regarding steroid use by baseball players, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. As strange as it is, I actually believe there is a case to be made for allowing MLB players to use steroids.
    To me baseball is more than America’s favorite pastime. To me baseball is America. A season of baseball is representative of the American dream. The season begins and through hard work, perspiration and only a little bit of luck, a team can go from cellar dweller the year before to World Champion. Just as not all people are financially equal, not all teams are. In America, there are billionaires and there are lower class people. In Baseball there are the New York Yankees with well over $200 million in payroll and there are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with roughly a tenth of that salary. It doesn’t seem like a fair match-up. And yet, just as money can’t buy happiness it can’t buy World Championships either.
    Baseball is also the only mostly-Capitalist sport in America. What I mean by vaguely calling it “mostly capitalist” is that unlike the other three major American sports (basketball, football, hockey) there is no salary cap. In baseball, if your team lives in a rich city you can sign all the expensive big-name players you want. Hence, the Yankees are stacked with huge salaries. America is similar to baseball in this way because we are partially capitalist with our approach that business is good, but we also are a mixed economy with welfare and business regulations. Baseball lets teams make and spend as much money as they darn well please, but every dollar that a baseball team spends on payroll above $200 million they have to put a dollar in a fund that is spread around to the teams that make the least revenue. America calls this tax on people the graduated income tax; baseball calls this tax on teams a luxury tax.
    Additionally, baseball and America are further tied in that they are both very rich in tradition. Fifty-seven times in history a baseball season has been opened by a sitting President throwing the first pitch. Baseball has even provided a morale boost in our nation’s toughest hour. After the Sept. 11 attacks, it was baseball that helped rally our nation and regain our way of life. Baseball even helped bridge racial relations in our nation, first with Jackie Robinson and later by Hank Aaron.
    In my opinion, baseball is America. Maybe the politicians in Washington feel the same way, because they are trying to pass legislation creating guidelines for the sport. But just because this great sport and our great nation are closely tied, doesn’t mean politicians have the best solution. In my opinion, legal steroids should be legal in baseball. In other words, if the players are taking a steroid supplement that is legal in America then it should be legal for them to use it.
    Many people would claim that players taking steroids to improve their performance is cheating. I respectfully disagree. Anything that a person does off the field to improve their ability to perform on the field should be praised not condemned. When I go to a baseball game, I want to see the best players going head to head putting on the best performance humanly possible. Steroids is a symptom of modern day America’s individualist strive for excellence.
    Another argument against steroid use in baseball is that it hurts the body of the person who uses the steroid. This is exactly right, in fact there have been a number of players in the last few years who used steroids and ended up dying because of them. The best example of this is Ken Caminiti. Caminiti was an average third baseman in the National League in the 1990s, to improve his performance he used steroids and started playing better. In 1998, he won the NL Most Valuable Player Award after having a monster season. He was a pretty good player for a few more years and then as he entered his mid 30s, his performance suffered and he retired. A few short years after his retirement he died, largely because of his extensive use of steroids. This sounds like a great argument against steroids, but I see it as an argument for allowing them. Caminiti had a life-long goal of winning an MVP award and being the best player he could. With his amazing season in ‘98 he powered his team to the World Series. Even though his life was cut short, perhaps it was more complete than it would have been otherwise.
    The best possible reason I see for punishing steroid use in baseball would be the little kids that look up to these baseball stars. Sports icons should not be encouraging bad or dangerous behavior. On the other hand, many already are encouraging bad and dangerous behavior when they sleep around with dozens of random women. In the NFL there are football All-Stars that are being tried for murder, and Mike Vick is currently sitting in prison because he gets a kick out of seeing dogs fight. If you think steroids is the biggest problem in professional sports, then you haven’t been keeping up with professional sports.
    If for some reason, we decide to put all bigger sports problems aside to deal with steroids I still don’t think the federal government is the proper venue. I think the teams, themselves, should take a stance on the issue of steroids. Every team should decide where they stand on the issue, and almost all teams will probably agree that they are against steroids primarily for the health of players. Then teams that take this stance should sign an agreement saying that they will not trade with teams that break this policy. Since it would be difficult for the commissioner’s office to enforce punishments for teams with players who use steroids (there are problems like: how did the team know that this player was using steroids?), it would be more easily enforced by the individual teams themselves. This would level the steroid playing field and would hold all teams accountable to all other teams.
    As for Barry Bonds, I don’t believe he should be excluded from the baseball Hall of Fame for using steroids. However, he should be excluded from the Hall of Fame for lying under oath. Unlike former President Clinton, I actually do think perjury is a big deal.
    In writing this, I am not definitively stating that it is my opinion that steroids should be allowed in baseball. Honestly, I’ve gone back and forth on the issue. However, it is apparent that for almost every issue there is another side that should be examined. Even an issue as cut and dry as steroids (which some people consider a form of cheating, that can potentially kill the user) could actually have another point of view. While I might not have a personal opinion about what MLB should do about steroid use, I certainly believe it shouldn’t be the congressional witch hunt, reminiscent of the McCarthy Hearings, that it has turned into. If something is to be done in baseball regarding steroids, it needs to be handled by the teams and MLB. If we get in this precedent of running every baseball decision through congress it won’t be too long before our congressional representatives will be arguing the merits of the infield fly rule.

 Send responses to
colonnadeletters@gcsu.edu

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 11 2008. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry