Exactly what you want from your $25 million dollar a year star athletes. It makes the entertainer better at entertaining, the same way smoking a joint might help a musician focus better during a performance. Acting as if cheating hasn't been going on from day one or that sports are somehow sacred or sancrosanct is ridiculous. Going to a sporting event is just like going to a concert or a movie or seeing a play.

I can't sell you on an idea that doesn't really make sense from a performance perspective.

...cheating, to me, would be corking a bat or a pitcher putting a foreign substance on the ball.

Healing faster is a good thing and there are lots of other things trainers and doctors are doing to insure that for athletes.

Myth Busters proved that the ball travels less when the bat is corked.

Steroids make you better at sport, so if they are permitted then in practice they will be non-optional if you want to succeed at competitive sport. "Allow some athletes to use them and others not" isn't really an option; the choice is between competitive sports where they are banned and competitive sports where virtually no-one who doesn't use them gets anywhere.

My understanding (although I should stress that I'm not an expert) is that using steroids has various potential negative health consequences.

So I think that forcing players not to use them is probably a better option than forcing them to do so.

Here are a few:
<snip>
Anabolic steroids are powerful hormones. They affect the entire body. Some of the side effects are common to all users. Other side effects are specifically related to your sex and age.

Men who take anabolic steroids may:

Develop breasts
Get painful erections
Have their testicles shrink
Have decreased sperm count
Become infertile
Become impotent
Women who take anabolic steroids may:

Grow excessive face and body hair
Have their voices deepen
Experience menstrual irregularities
Have an enlarged clitoris
Have reduced breast size
Have a masculinized female fetus
Both men and women who take anabolic steroids may:

Get acne
Have an oily scalp and skin
Get yellowing of the skin (jaundice)
Become bald
Have tendon rupture
Have heart attacks
Have an enlarged heart
Develop significant risk of liver disease and liver cancer
Have high levels of "bad" cholesterol
Have mood swings
Fly into rages
Suffer delusions
Teens who take anabolic steroids may:

Have short height due to arrested bone growth
Girls may suffer long-term masculinization
Since steroids are often taken by injections, there is also the risk of getting HIV or hepatitis infection from an unsterile needle or syringe.

"There are a lot of side effects of steroids," Mautner tells WebMD. "They are not good for you. It is like Russian roulette. Five people may take them and have no long-term problem. The sixth may end up dead."
http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20050316/why-steroids-are-bad-for-you

There are other PEDs such as HGH.
<snip>
Steroids are different from HGH in that steroids increase the size of muscle cells, mostly through water weight. When a person uses HGH as a performance enhancement drug, they gain only lean muscle mass. The weight gain is slow, usually between one and two pounds of lean muscle every two to three weeks. However, by taking HGH and developing new muscle cells, a person can alter their genetic capabilities and achieve results that wouldn't be possible without HGH treatment.

The second desired effect of HGH treatment is increased energy and metabolism. GH is produced in the human body naturally at its highest levels during youth and puberty. It is primarily responsible for the heightened levels of energy in children. However, the amount of GH that a body produces and secretes declines as a person ages.

Supplementing HGH can raise your energy levels and metabolism. It can cause you to feel energized and burn fat. In fact, HGH is a precursor to IGF-1; IGF-1 secretion is caused by HGH secretion. IGF-1 forces your body to seek energy from your fat reserves rather than from the food you consume. This results in significant weight loss even in inactive periods.

The third desired effect of HGH treatment is that it shortens the amount of time needed for recovery between workouts. It can strengthen joints and ligaments and heal damaged tissue. Additionally, because it is a natural substance, it is not as easily detected as other performance-enhancing drugs.
<snip>
http://voices.yahoo.com/human-growth-hormone-hgh-benefits-risks-myths-46207.html

In addition, gawd knows what chemists are cooking up to sell that can't be detected by current drug tests. Then there is the European market which is wide open to anything.
Steroids are very bad news for kids and teens. They really screw up a body that is changing anyway.
Some players don't care. They will take anything no matter the risks.

As far as Tommy John surgery goes, you would be nuts to have it one if it wasn't necessary. There is no guarantee that you will be a better pitcher. Rehab takes a year and is grueling.
Todd Stottlemeyer chose not to have TJ surgery. He used a series of exercises to strengthen the muscles around the affected area and pitched quite well.

...most any surgery has the risk of death.

Living has the risk of death, but I'll advocate for quality of life.

That's your response? Really?

Steroids have continuing and as yet unseen effects. They may tear up our system or years.

Surgery has risks, but they are better known than steroids. Your body chemistry and metabolism can create very different effects than those in others.

Go ahead. Take them. Not my body and not my risk.

that even if he risks his health by wearing a lighter than regulation helmet, he can run faster. I don't think anyone believes it is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows such things happen anyway.

The real question comes in when it is "how do you make this safer". I certainly don't have an answer, just more questions.

That a player might find a rules violating piece of equipment helpful isn't the standard. For instance, a lot of baseball players would like to use a corked bat or aluminum bat. (When the NHL adopted helmets it was grand-fathered and some old-time players went without for years. It's a macho game and the only way to get playrs to wear them was to require it.)

The NFL makes a decision about the sort of competition it desires, using whatever standards it uses, and then those rules are binding on all players.

And player safety is a rational consideration. Without any helmets a few players might die i every NFL game and the NFL has a right to reckon that it would be bad for the overall health of the sport.

I think you are right.

The problem with steroids (etc) is their effect on high school and college athletes who (if steroid use is widespread at the top) must either take them or forget about achieving professional levels of excellence.

If ALLOWED they would quickly become effectively MANDATORY because one cannot compete without using them.

And that's the greatest reason for a ban. So that they do not become effectively mandatory in MLB, and the minors, and college and high school and little league.

Nobody wants "To compete at any level you have to be on some dangerous drug."

And they are really bad for people, medically.

It would be like allowing NASCAR cars to have a jet engine strapped to them so they can go 500 MPH. That would ensure multiple fatal wrecks at all races, but would also make jet engines mandatory to qualify for a race, since nobody going 300 MPH would even be in the running.

But in terms of PERFORMANCE and WHAT THE FANS WANT TO SEE, a 500 MPH car clearly satisfies both.

Hell, why shouldn't NASCAR just have no limitations on cars at all. Maybe we can have races where 90% of the drivers die.

Because you will find somebody, somewhere, willing to commit suicide on TV to maybe win some money.

MLB has both the right and sufficient reason to ban PEDs.

The combination of your name and avatar crack me up.

Steroids cause damage to the body in the long run and can damage the psyche in the short run. Steroids can cause rage, paranoia, delusions and lead to violent, harmful actions. They can affect potency, blood pressure, sleep, appetite, and more, and those things can lead to unhealthy behaviors.

Baseball is the dream of many a kid at some point. So many who pick up a ball and nat as a child fantasize for a while that they too could hit the run, win the game, be the hero. Why take that dream away by adding the onus of destroying one's health and wellbeing as a necessary part of it?

and keeping them illegal only increases the harmful production of bad ones.

It's a tough call, I agree, but it's also very much the same as arguing that the drug war has had a positive effect on society. I really don't see that.

And yes, when steroids are abused they are a major health concern. Major. Anabolic steroids have been so maligned that the first thing most people think when they hear the term steroids, is that steroids are bad. And yes, steroid abuse is bad.

But steroids also can do a hell of a lot of good, for a hell of a lot of people. As I look around at the physical shape most of are in, I think we need more steroids, not less. And I'm sure most others will not see it this way, and that's ok.

last year Lance Armstrong and the entire sport of cycling was dragged through the streets and pilloried as a joke because of doping allegations. Yet when it is an All-American sport in the spot light, and like Armstrong I believe A-Rod et al are the tip of the iceberg, we get shrugs and what's the big deal.

Either we accept that it happens at all levels, in all sports and at least tacitly approve, while telling young athletes the harm it will do them in the long term, or we battle it equally in all sports and ban players/ strike records that are tainted by drug use.

When you keep asking questions, like is this worthwhile when so many are doing it, it takes a toll on the legitimacy of the ban.

That's why people ask questions, and why attitudes evolve.

the 'everyone is doing it' was part of the reason a sport of low US interest was vilified. Here a sport with a huge US following gets a 'so what?'

I believe it would be similar for sports like rugby and cricket, they would be shredded in our media. Yet how much focus goes into NFL steroid use? A couple of stories a year but no concerted effort to determine how widespread is drug use.

but baseball is a highly followed sport, too. It's like claiming the NBA doesn't have widespread steroid use.

The same question is still on the table.

Since athletes inherently must take care of their health, if steroids weren't illegal, it would lead to the production of less harmful steroids.

I think this argument can go either way. For a while, I was anti-steroid. It's so pervasive, though, why not make them available, and make them safer so that everyone can benefit if they choose that road.

What is the cost/benefit, health/benefit, and the reasons for not doing so, since it is done anyway.

steroids that produce a bigger bang for the buck so to speak. Unless the safer steroids can deliver the best results, they will continue to look elsewhere.

I also believe that chemists have been working on designer drugs to target specific areas and escape detection. Steroids may be the least of the worries.

but making it illegal isn't going to stop chemists from producing new drugs, and steroid users aren't going to stop looking for ways to give them the professional edge. They already do it at the risk of their own health.

Why not at least allow them to do it with some semblance of safety. That's my devil's advocate question. Because it is going to happen, either way.

Imagine I were your boss and wanted to have you take stimulant drugs to make you more productive than you normally are. By the way, post-WWII Japanese companies did spike their water coolers for this reason, so no wiggling out of the question and saying that it wouldn't work or would never happen. Technically you have a choice to drink the water I supply or not. But if you don't, you will work slower, and I will notice and fire you. Now let me also remind you, in case you're thinking of shifting the burden of responsibility to the player, MLB is a monopoly and has been given an exemption from anti-trust laws. So you can also imagine me as the only employer for your field. So is it fair for me to make you drink amphetamine laced water in order to speed things up at my factory, even though it isn't health for you in the long run?

by her stepmother.

It is a sport and there are rules. I look at it no differently than filing a ball or corking a bat. You are using something to give yourself an unfair advantage in a sport with rules against such a thing.

Or, "body enhancement" surgery.

Dumb in all cases, but whatever pleases the audience and sells beer and Dodge Rams.

it has become a stringent ban on barn doors being open, and there should be a ban on them being open, but oh, wait, there went all of the horses, anyway.

and sense they feel players on these drugs have a competitive advantage they take away potential salary from players in the union conforming to the agreed upon work place environment. There is no such agreement to ban players who have surgery from the game nor would it be legal to do so.

While fans may worry about hurting records or the concept of tainting the past... modern players are concerned about having to violate American laws, and possibly their own health to do their work. They have correctly concluded that they shouldn't have to do this nor should players that violate the agreed upon rules be allowed to work without punishment.

If America's drug laws changed or medical evidence testing showed long term HGH steroid cycling had little effect long term on players' lives then I imagine the union would have a different opinion on the matter...

EOM

Throw all the cheating f'ers out.

to better compete? It is their body and their choice and we certainly don't want parents involved in those choices (schools could give the drugs out to kids for free and without having to tell their parents of course).

I've been saying this for years. A genetically gifted individual can get equal or even better results from certain legal supplements than he/she could from a light anabolic cycle. The ones who are doping aren't terribly extreme in comparison to some other athletes. However, I think there should be limits on them. It could get way out of hand.

Exercise increases strength in both muscle and connective tissue; juicing only strengthens muscle, and the imbalance can lead to you tearing yourself up. Speaking of Tommy John surgery...notice the Steroid Era and the Tommy John Surgery Era coincide?

Also, Babe Ruth didn't need to juice to become the greatest player of all time. If big cigars, strong drink and frequent fucking were good enough for The Babe they should be good enough now.

I asked my original question. Modern athletes in comparison to Ruth are all cheaters.
They train and eat right and generally take care of themselves better than the Babe ever did thus leading to better stats than back in the day.

He played 2503 games over 22 seasons in the major leagues. In them, he got:

8,399 at-bats
Scored 2,174 runs and got 2,873 hits
He hit 714 home runs.

His lifetime batting average was .342; on-base percentage was .474

He stole 123 bases and was picked off 117 times.

Now...compare that to Ichiro, who has played 2033 games over 13 seasons. So far, his numbers are:

8,520 at-bats
Scored 1,252 runs and got 2,723 hits
He hit 110 home runs

His overall batting average is .320; on-base percentage is .362

He stole 470 bases and was picked off 105 times

(I chose Ichiro because, so far as we know, Ichiro doesn't juice; if he did he'd probably be bigger around than a number-two pencil)

Or A-rod...2,541 games played over 20 years service...

9,727 at-bats
Scored 1,907 runs and got 2,918 hits
He hit 649 home runs

HIs overall batting average is .300; on-base percentage is .384

Babe Ruth played in an era when hard living was considered proper training technique so his numbers must be seen in that light, but his numbers compare favorably to those of today's players.

Trained properly?
I bet he could have hit a thousand homers.
50 lbs lighter?
He would have had 200 SB's
But we'll never know, remarkable that he could SEE the ball, let alone knock it out.

to allow steroids is to force anyone dreaming of a profession baseball career to use them - they give to great an advantage to those players that use them.