Drugs, Cheating, and the Purity of Americas Pastime Essay -- Baseball

Most children who have cock-a-hoop up in an American ho employmenthold have at adept point in their lives looked up to sports figures as heroes. Whether it was your grandfather telling his stories of ceremonial occasion Babe Ruth become a legend, your fathers stories of paddy field Mantle and the legendary Yankee teams of the 1950s and 1960s, or your own repositing of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chasing the home run record, the feeling of wholesomeness that baseball game provides has al personal manners put up its route into many peoples hearts. Steroids have tarnished these sacred memories, rolling doubts in the minds of many on the legitimacy of records and statistics and finally affected the way younger players play the game. baseball, Americas early(prenominal)ime, is embedded in the fabric of society. The players and teams have come and gone, but the thing that remains constant is baseballs ability to unite people as well as families. My own personal experience of thi s came right after September 11th, 2001. interest the tragedy that was 9/11, the country needed something to help everyone return to normalcy. In our moment of weakness and uncertainty, baseball helped calm my nerves. Fifty three railway yard three hundred and twelve brothers stood up in unison and took gage their lives. The electricity of that game, the sense of regularity in my life, and the knowledge that millions of people were finding comfort together with me during such a hard time, helped me feel a sense of closure that the worst was fucking us.It is the mystique and aura of the players, the exciting tales behind them, as well as the history of the game that keeps us elicit as fans. These are the reasons why people, children especially, see these players as invincible, and perfect in every way, shape, and form. What would happen if after a century of inspiring stories, and undreamt tales of heroism, the inconceivable notion that these players were not perfect, took pro minence? Or that many of these superstars cheated their way to the top?Recently the topic of steroid use in baseball has been everywhere in the news. It has finally come to the attention of Major partnership Baseball, and now the general public, that a vast percentage of players have been development illegal performance-enhancing drugs. This not only casts a buy of suspicion all over which players are using steroids, and makes one wonder which players are genuine, but it tar... ...ue Baseball is showing that they are finally becoming adamant about freeding themselves and their study of this problem, is something that should give us hope for now, as well as for the future. until now more so than simply testing the players though, I think a key issue that has been overlooked and that may be a wide contributor to the steroid problem without many people being awake(predicate) of it, is the incentives given in a players contract. Getting rid of the six figure bonuses commonly gi ven for a certain add up of home runs, hits, strikeouts, innings pitched, etc, will help reduce the apparent need to use steroids as a source of instant reward and income. While doing this thither will still most certainly be players drawn to steroids as a means to get ahead of the competition for personal eminence or other reasons, the fact is eliminating bonuses has the potential to significantly reduce the follow of users in the league. It is then, and only then that we can be prepared to full eliminate the steroid problem as we know it today, remove the cloud of doubt over everyones heads, and return the game of baseball to the past glorification that it once knew, as the true American pastime.