More and more we are reading about controversy in sports, from what age can an individual be drafted as a professional to steroids. I wont bother with the former, seeing that a person has to right to skip important parts of their life to become an athlete.
But, steroids, performance enhancing drugs, all that, now THAT is a topic that many have delved into, and there is no limit as to what can be said about it. These people get to live every person’s dream (well, almost everyone’s) and play a sport they excel at for a living. I can tell you now, I dream every day about playing professional baseball, wishing I had been one of the gifted few. These people, as I said, live that dream, and yet, somehow, that dream is lost behind dollar signs and all that crap not too long after realizing the dream. The pressure to be the best, to keep performing at a higher level is quite high. I can see how athletes are tempted to do what’s necessary to rise above the others, or to maintain they’re lofty status.
Take Barry Bonds, my focus for this little topic here. This, I will never argue against, is a great hitter. His discipline at the plate is unparalleled. But, if you look at him, watch him hit pitches, you may notice something, I sure did, and I don’t know why no one else has questioned this. Most home runs of his (I see watching highlights on ESPN) would be deep flies, at the most, if anyone else hit the ball with the same level of contact. He is SO strong he can muscle a routine fly into a home run. At his age, with the rate of his muscle growth, he should not be able to do this. Think about it: how many baseball players have, around or at the age of 40, been as strong as him? He put on, what, 20-40 pounds of muscle in one off-season (Assuming those reports are correct)? People who spend their lives working out, muscle building, will say his increase in muscle mass in the amount of time it took him is impossible without performance enhancers.
I don’t care if they’re “legal” or “illegal” performance enhancers, THEY’RE STILL PERFORMANCE ENHANCERS. It taints an entire game by using anything unnatural outside of normal muscle building through weight lifting and dieting. These people get paid millions of dollars, and we spend hundreds of dollars to see them, to play a game, and it’s all about, in the beginning, their talent, realized or not, and to me, using steroids and all that kills the magic of this, or any, sport.
