The Nexus

Every baseball fan in the world had their eyes glued to the television as they watched Barry Bonds make contact with what would be his record-breaking 71st home run of the 2001 season.

Accusations were later leaked that Bonds was taking performance-enhancing drugs during his career year in 2001. Prior to Bonds, other baseball players had been suspected of using steroids and some even had been caught or confessed, but this was the moment in baseball history that officially marked this generation as the steroid era.

So much for being a baseball legend.

In the past two decades, the sports world has witnessed some of the most exciting seasons in history. At the same time, baseball has also been plagued by professional sports’ ongoing controversy: the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

Major League Baseball has come up with a procedure to rid baseball of steroids, which entails random drug tests throughout the season that are to be kept confidential. If a player is caught using steroids, they may receive a suspension or expulsion from Major League Baseball depending on whether it has been a first offense or not. While cheating the game is wrong , I feel that finding out about players using steroids has ruined the game of baseball for me.

In December of 2007, Sen. George Mitchell released a report with a list of 89 MLB players suspected of using steroids. This report is what completely tainted baseball’s reputation forever.

It has gotten to the point where any baseball player with a pulse is in jeopardy of having his reputation tainted by wrong steroid accusations.

In 2003, in an effort to determine how widespread steroid use in baseball was, Major League Baseball and the players union agreed to random drug testing as long as results were kept confidential. Since then, federal agents have seized all test results. Some of these results have leaked, and we now know that baseball superstars Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz used steroids during their career.

The truth is that these tests results should’ve been burned for the greater good of baseball. But instead, we now have to hear about a different player using steroids every day.

Today, it has become progressively easier to forget that even the biggest sports stars are entitled to their privacy. Yet, every positive test somehow finds its way into the public eye.

It is too bad that baseball has plummeted to its new all-time low because of steroids. Sometimes I wish that I never knew about baseball’s trouble with steroids; maybe even lying would have made everything better, but this all might be too utopian of an idea.

Fans feel cheated when they find out their baseball idols are cheating the game. The bitterness is widespread. In a USA Today/CNN poll conducted in 2005, 82 percent of fans said that records set by athletes using steroids should be eliminated or accompanied with an asterisk. That little asterisk is like a black mark on the entire sport.

The bad rap that baseball has been getting has had such a detrimental effect on the sport that it is hard for even the most devoted fans to watch their favorite player without thinking about steroids in the back of his mind.

To America, baseball is the sport that embodies who we are as a culture and society. To have that tainted by steroids is in some ways unforgivable.

Baseball authorities didn’t act in the best interest of the sport or its fans. Perhaps one day baseball will be back on track to take back its reputation as “America’s greatest past-time.”