Joey Gines

Gustavo Ibarra Ph.D.

October 29, 2015
Research paper

Steroids research paper

Steroids are a huge part of sports and life, I mean who wouldnt want to be bigger
fast stronger and of course more confidence. Steroids are not bad for you, if used
properly they can help get cancer patients muscles back to be able to function, people
who have delayed puberty and people who have AIDs life a normal life. Like any drug,
steroids can be abused we mostly see this in athletes trying to get an edge, weather it is
body builders who want to get rid of every ounce of body on them, baseball players who
want to build strength so they can hit the ball one hundred more feet, football players
who take such a physically beating for more then 6 months out of the year use them so
that their body can handle the beating, or just any athlete that is trying to get an extra
step. According to drugabuse.gov steroids are mostly abused by people who take ten to
one hundred times high of a dose then doctors give for medical purposes, to put that into

prospective if a doctor prescribes somebody one pill every day according to studies
steroid abusers would take up to one hundred of those pills a day!
All drugs have different effects on the brain steroids do not give off that
rewarding high that other drugs do. The major effects of steroids are long-term the can
potentially effect brain pathways and chemicals (.drugabuse.gov). Examples are major
moods swings, roid rage, paranoid jealousy and the feeling of being invincibly. In men it
can cause testicular atrophy, reduced sperm count and increase in prostate cancer. In
women it can cause growth of facial hair, baldness, changes in the menstrual cycle and
enlargement of the clitoris.
I started playing baseball when I was three years old, and in the last twenty years
all I think about when I hear steroids is baseball. When my friends and I discuss the ban
for illegal performance enhancing drugs in baseball it gets pretty intense. All of my
friends including myself have loved baseball since we were born. Where we disagree is,
they like the current Major League Baseball Punishment on performance enhancing
drugs. The current punishment is: the first offence you a get fifty game suspension, you
second offence you get a one hundred game suspension. Lastly, if you get caught a third
time for P.E.Ds, and then you get a lifetime ban from Baseball. This punishment system
is not hard enough on the star players and letting them off the hook with low risk and a
high reward, and it is unfair to past players who have received life long bans for violating

league rules not even close to being considered cheating, it also sends a horrible message
to the next generation of baseball players
In 2012, San Francisco giants left fielder Melkey Cabrera was banned 50 games
for his use of performance enhancing drugs throughout the 2011 and 2012 season, he was
given a 50 game suspension. After serving his suspension, he was cut from the Giants. A
couple months later, the Toronto Blue Jays offered Cabrera a five year fifty million dollar
deal. Fifty out of one hundred-sixty two games is not a big suspension for these star
players. Big name star players will see this case with Cabrera and assume he got caught
and then he gets fifty million after he is done with his suspension. It is as if they are being
rewarded. Teams who are at the bottom of the league and need to win now will sign them
because they will preform at a winning level. Major League Baseball needs to give a
lifetime ban to first offenders of cheating and using PEDs.
Pete Rose is arguable the best hitters to play the game of baseball. In his long
historic career, Pete Rose recorded 4,256 hits in his career, which is still the Major
League record for hits in a career. Pete Rose made a big mistake when he bet on major
league baseball games, though he never bet against the Cincinnati Reds, will never be in
the hall of fame, because he bet a couple baseball games. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds,
Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, and Roger Clemens all were on the ballet for the hall of
fame this year, even though all four of them openly admitted using PEDs. The greatest

hitter of all time isnt in the hall because he bet on a game. Five of the biggest cheaters in
the history of sports, who not only cheated but also were charged with prudery, are going
to be given the chance to be inducted into the Cooperstown, with Thomas and Clemens
getting inducted this year.
Professional Athletes are some of the biggest role models to young kids as they
grow up and watch their favorite team play their favorite sport and dream of one day
being a part of that team. As a little kid I loved Jason Giambi, he was my favorite
baseball player. The year I found out that Jason Giambi took PEDs, I ran to my dad and
asked him for steroids for Christmas so I could be like Giambi and hit five hundred foot
homeruns. Thats when my dad explained to me that him and many other baseball players
are cheating to be good and my heart was crushed. Little kids look up to the Major
League players. It is unfortunate that so many players have their head crammed so far up
the multimillion-dollar contracts that they forget about the kids, and that kids who watch
these cheaters play and think they need to cheat to make it big.
Major League Baseball needs to come up with a new punishment for cheaters, the
current one is like getting in trouble with your grandma, they will tell you not to do it
again or you will be punished worse, but you wont ever learn your lesson. Baseball needs
get rid of people like Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. After getting caught cheating
they get a life time ban, all records they have need to be cleaned away and they need to

be kicked out of baseball forever. If you walk around to any baseball field in America you
will see a game being played, but thats what most people do is they watch the game.
Now look into the stands and you will see thousands of people, now look deeper, you will
see a father and his son. Baseball is just game, but it is a game where fathers spend time
with their sons, and are able to teach their sons life lessons by just watching one simple
game. What happens when those lessons are twisted and turned and cheated by the very
players people spend so much money to go and watch? It is a face Performance
Enhancing Drugs are in baseball there is no doubt about it. Show me one clean player Ill
show you ten dirty ones, it is just how it works now days, but was there a time when the
worst drug a player would use to get an edge was cough syrup so he could play through a
cold?
Baseball is a beautiful game from the simple math Equation 6+4+3=2, to the
entire complex math that goes into getting all the states and all the fun in between. In all
aspects of life when people take numbers way to serious and start looking at personal
gain rather then team gain, thats when all sports become dirty. When I was a sophomore
in high school I asked my baseball coach Craig Culver, a high school baseball coach for
18 year and also played for the university of Wyoming, about Jose Batista just suddenly
becoming one of the greatest power hitters in the major league and the first thing he said
was he is hitting the juice harder then before. And I asked myself, how could a man

who loves the game of baseball so much and for as long as he has, and just go straight to
what I believe is everybodys bail out and say it was steroids. It wasnt that he completely
changed his approach at the plate, his prep to swing going from a short stride to a longer
stride, it is because he used steroids. If we take the same example and put him fifty plus
years ago in the golden days of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Hank
Aaron, and ask somebody they will just say he is a good hitter simple as that he just got
out of a six year slump. For over a hundred years the glory of baseball was it is a team
sport on paper, but unlike football and basketball you dont have somebody blocking for
you, or setting you up to score. It is One on One you verse the pitcher. Steroids take that
saying and throw it out the window; it suddenly becomes one on two because of how
much better it makes players. Now days it is Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun and many
others back then it was Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark the white hulk McGuire.
All of these guys have damaged the beautiful game forever, and to them it wasnt
anymore then taking cough syrup for a cold, because the league never tested for it. They
found a way to be the best and it showed in the historic season where McGuire and Sosa
went on a race for history blasting homerun after homerun and both ended up with over
seventy homeruns.
I read an Essay by Joe Posnanski, now I can see where all of his points are true,
but one thing he didnt talk about as much as I had hoped was the big bomber era. He

talked about when baseball was clean and pure, He Made a comment about the 1951
Giants who had a system for stealing signs and because of that they were able to catch the
dodgers to end up winning the NL Tittle. His clam is stealing signs is just like steroids. I
am very outrage and disappointed in his clam, Baseball is a game of tendency, from
coaching to pitching it all one big ass game of chess. Batters in the box have to guess
what pitch the pitcher has to throw and pitchers have to guess what the batter is guessing
and throw something else. Saying stealing signs is cheating is just him trying to find
away to make the game sound more dirty than it is so that steroids dont sound like such a
big deal when all the other teams do all this other stuff Last weekend my dads thirteen
year old baseball team was in St. George Utah for a baseball tournament, one of the other
coaches and I literally sat in the dug out for all the games and stole the other teams signs
so we knew what pitch they were going to throw. In the Majors you face a team a number
of times, you study scouting reports and Break down film, so you can see how a pitcher
pitches a game how a batter bats and how a coach coaches. With all of these reports you
can know what pitch Clayton Kershaw throws to a right handed batter with a 1-2 count
and the wind blowing four miles per hour to the outside part of the plate to a right handed
batter.
Steroids are not part of the chess game. I once heard a man talking about steroids
and he also used the chess comparison. He said Using steroids is like having the worlds

smartest man telling you moves to make in a chess game. And that is one hundred
percent true. If you show up to a chess game with the smartest man it takes away the one
on one aspect that makes it such a fun thing to watch. Now back to the father son theory,
Fathers teach life lessons through baseball right? Now what happens when Barry Bonds
breaks the record for all time home runs in a career and some little boy says Daddy I
want to be just like him. When in reality he cheats the game to be come the best power
hitter ever. Not only does steroids damage the game and the games honor and integrity, it
damages all the kids that look up to them too. If they take them and get caught they will
says the guys in the major leagues uses them so why cannot I use them?