Steroids ke Surga

Saya berpikir it’s cukup sehat berangkat setiap pagi dengan lecutan cepat otak; menanya pertanyaan kepada sendiri, atau dengan sederhana mulai berjalan dari teka-teki. Sesudah anda sudah berlatih otak anda untuk menjadi tajam, malah di startup, anda akan dapat menangani persoalan hari yang lebih besar.

This Morning I memutuskan menangani persoalan penggunaan obat di olahraga -- yaitu Steroids di Baseball Liga Utama. Tidak sederhana kebetulan yang membawa saya ke proses yang dipikirkan seperti itu, tidak meratakan menutup. Saya tidak bisa mengalihkan televisi saya ke ESPN jaman sekarang dengan tidak mati tenggelam di laut spekulasi dengan memandang sampai penggunaan Steroid oleh beberapa pemain permainan yang paling luar biasa.

Apakah Barry Bonds memakai Steroids? Mungkin, tetapi tidak ada bukti nyata itu. Apa mengenai Jose Canseco? Niscaya jawaban ialah ya, katanya itu sendiri. Apa di sekitar Sosa, Burnitz, Bret Boone dan lain-lainnya? Here I akan posit bergema "barangkali." Tetapi, permainan nama di titik ini mubazir; ada persoalan yang lebih besar di bermain.

Sewaktu saya melihatnya, persoalan ialah dua-melipat: Terlebih Dulu, apakah bahan sebaiknya dilarang dari penggunaan di Baseball Liga Utama dengan sederhana di rekening efek merugikannya di badan manusia? Detik, apakah Steroid memakai benar-benar kerusakan "integritas" permainan?

(Hopefully I masih bergema... )

Bukan.

Jawaban sederhana sampai kedua pertanyaan ialah no.

Saya tidak semuanya terlalu pasti bagaimana adalah bisnis saya yang mana pun apa yang dilakukan oleh seorang pemain ke badannya untuk memperbaiki mengayunkan pemukul di bola. Jika seorang pemain begitu putus-asa untuk uang atau kemasyuran sebagai untuk merusakkan badannya, sering secara permanen, saya kepada siapa berada di caranya? Mengapa memilih Steroids? Banyak studi sudah menunjukkan bahwa suplemen suka kerugian Creatine dan HGH badan jika dipakai improperly—and malah dengan semestinya, di waktu. Disamping ini, tidak ada kekurangan dokter yang mempertahankan bahwa Steroids bisa dipakai dengan selamat, yang dirangkaikan dengan kekilafan daksa.

Saya masih mesti mendengar siapa saja datang mengambil larangan langsung suplemen tersebut yang "meningkatkan perbuatan." Perhaps anabolic Steroids dengan sederhana meningkatkan perbuatan sampai derajat yang tak dapat diterima. Tetapi, yang tidak bisa menyetujuinya? Penggemar tidak kelihatannya berkeberatan menjaga lalat bola dari halaman. Penggemar aren’t diganggu dengan mulai bekerja untuk mendapat rata-rata yang dikelola. Sepanjang sewaktu Barry Bonds menyimpan aliran mantap baseball terbang ke dalam McCovey 's Teluk Kecil kami akan benar-benar baik-baik. Adalah pemain "bersih", seperti Mike Greenwell, yang dikecewakan dengan steroids di Baseball Liga Utama. (Mike Greenwell selesai detik kepada Jose Canseco di Liga Amerika 1988 kebanyakan pemungutan suara pemain berharga. ) kepada pemain ini, risiko yang dilibatkan di Steroids, rupanya, lebih luar biasa daripada hadiah. Jauh adalahnya dari saya untuk mempertanyakan jantung mereka, tetapi mereka hanya mungkin agak rendah di atas jus bersaing. Jika kami benar-benar mau membuat semua keuntungan bersaing ilegal, kami bisa mulai dengan membatasi jumlah orang Dominika yang dibolehkan di atas daftar piket Liga Utama. (Atau, akibat, sisipan jumlah minimum Orang kulit putih di atas setiap daftar piket. )

I will attempt to answer the second question, starting with another question: What would Major League Baseball be without integrity? If there is one thing professional sports cannot succeed without it is integrity.

Well, steroids and integrity that is.

Let's be honest, America's game was reeling after the strikes of the mid-1990s and needed, for lack of a better phrase, a shot in the arm—or in the buttock, depending. This inoculation came during the summer of 1998 in the form of two Herculean superstars, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. This pair was just what the doctor ordered. Baseball, seemingly, gained back nearly everything it had lost from the strike shortened seasons of the past. The great home run chase captivated the entire globe. Balls were flying out of Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium at a record pace. In the end, America's hero and the new Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire, broke Roger Maris' longstanding record of 61 home runs in a season.

I didn't know what to thank first, the syringe, the liquid disinfectant or the adhesive tape.

If it is indeed true that better than half of Major League Baseball players have used steroids, one must only conclude that these two men did not abstain.

Ken Caminiti, the deceased San Diego Padre and former National League most valuable player, brought this controversy to the fore a few years back when he stated in Sports Illustrated that at least half of the League was using Steroids—still significantly less than Jose Canseco's estimate of 85 per cent. There is absolutely no way that Bud Selig, commissioner of Baseball, and players' union representatives like Donald Fehr can claim invincible ignorance with respect to Steroid use in Major League Baseball. They simply overlooked the use of performance enhancing drugs because it was making baseball better for the fans.

Also, at thsy time the use of Steroids was not even illegal—ethics and legality do not always mirror one another. Major League Baseball never acted against the use of Steroids by its players because its players were performing better than they ever had before, plain and simple. (Shortstops and second basemen were hitting .300 with 45 home runs, numbers that were unheard out of the middle infield.) In short, Major League Baseball got out of a rut and regained its license to print money. The health of Major League baseball as a for-profit enterprise trumped both the health of its players and the ubiquitous integrity of the game—whatever that means.

The integrity of any game is contingent, in my opinion, upon its overall fairness and nothing else—including the ethics of its players. Nowadays Major League ball players have equal access to all manner of performance enhancing drugs—no one is discriminated against. The integrity of the game cannot be achieved by removing substances or adding asterisks to record books. (*Just for the record, I think there should be a nice-sized one parked right next to Babe Ruth's name, a fat man who never even stared down an African-American on the mound.) The integrity of the game, its fairness, can and should only be measured by the unadulterated nature of its conclusions. Pitchers pitch and hitters put the same bats on the same balls, end of story. I think at the end of a long, hard, day very few people actually think Steroid use is bad for baseball. So far, it's been good; it's been very good.

So, as fans, if we can stomach oversized heads and short tempers we will continue to be awestruck by the long ball—and baseball will continue to succeed. We love our game and the players who swing for the fences, even if it kills them.