Performance Enhancing drugs have been an epidemic throughout professional sports for a long time and while new regulations and new ways to catch athletes who use such substances have been implemented, there is no way to completely stop this issue. Major League Baseball catches dozens of players using these banned drugs every year but it is almost certain that the players who get away with using these drugs far outweigh the amount that get caught. These substances are very popular in baseball because while it is beneficial to be strong in all sports, their is a direct offensive benefit to having massive muscles when you walk up to the plate. The stronger you are, the more homeruns you hit and the further you can hit the ball. Because of this obvious benefit to using these drugs, many players use them and while the number of players who use them have gone down significantly (well at least that we know of), there was once no ban on the use of these drugs was not banned and they were everywhere.

Via The Open News

While there is no definitive start or end time to the “steroid era” in professional baseball, it usually references the time between the early 80’s and the early 2000’s. During the 1980’s, performance enhancing drugs were coming on to the scene and being popularized and until 1991 the MLB did very little to try and prevent this. Steroids were banned in 1991 and even though they were considered to be banned substances, the MLB did not implement a league wide testing system until 2003 meaning that there was really no way to catch players if they chose to use these drugs. People did not realize how widespread the use of these drugs were in the league until they begun getting caught and it started to come into the light. People I suppose thought it was magic that suddenly players were breaking records that had stood for decades and continued to break these records each year. It was like overnight everyone had gotten magically gotten stronger and that is pretty much what actually happened. Between 1961 and 1994 only 3 players had reached the 50 homerun mark in a single season, then starting in the mid 1990’s many players started to easily surpass this milestone. Continuing into the late 1990’s, the single season homerun record seemed to be broken yearly after both Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire broke the 37 tear old record both in the same year.  Three years later in 2001, the record was again broken by Barry Bonds who racked up an unprecedented 73 homeruns in a single season.

While this new incredible increase in offensive output wowed fans and increase the popularity of the game once again, each of these players have been linked to the usage of performance enhancing drugs. The 500 homerun club was once regarded as a tremendous accomplishment for players but is now earning new members what seems like each and every year and no longer carries the same prestige. Many of the best players in history have been linked to the usage of performance enhancing drugs, should this tarnish their legacy or eliminate the records they set?

During the prime of the “steroid era” in baseball, these drugs were banned from the league. The records that guys like Sosa and Bonds set where done against the rules of the league so should their accomplishments be ridden of? It is not fair to guys who played the game decades ago who had no drugs to give them huge muscle. It is not fair to those guys who played during this era and played clean without the use of these drugs. It is not fair to those players now who play clean and have the impossible task of breaking the records of men who cheated to get in the position they are in. On the other hand, many people think that these players would have had Hall of Fame careers even without the use of these illegal substances.

Barry Bonds                                              Via SI.com

In my opinion, It is not fair to players in the past who have had their records broken by these players who cheated and it is not fair to players today who play cleanly and have to try to match these crazy numbers that were put up by guys who have even admitted to using performance enhancing drugs. But I also see that at the beginning of that era, players used these substances in order to gain a competitive advantage over other players, but by the time when McGwire and Bonds and Sosa all began to put up incredible numbers of homeruns each year, players were no longer using these substances in order to gain an advantage over their opponents, they were using these substances in order to even the playing field because everyone was using them at this time and players had to use them if they wanted to keep up with the other players.

Do I think it is fair that guys who cheated hold records like this and sit in the Hall of Fame? No I do not think that it is fair. Do I think that these guys should be stripped of their accolades? No because it is not arguable that these guys were all tremendous talents in the sport and what they did was really a product of the time period that they played in.