Baseball has long been considered the quintessential American pastime. The tradition and reverence of the game are a couple of examples as to why people are so upset over the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
But, to all the traditionalists who defy he integrity of the sport, I say, “What’s the big deal?”
The steroids era was considered to be between the late 1980s and the late 2000s, when there was an increase in offensive output throughout the game of baseball.
The most notable example of performance-enhancing drugs was the 1997 home run race between St. Louis Cardinals’ first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs’ outfielder Sammy Sosa, who were both chasing the single-season home run record of Roger Maris, who hit 61 in 1961.
In a league that had only seen three players reach the 50-home run mark between 1961 and 1994, it seemed almost inevitable that both Sosa and McGwire would break Maris’ record.
McGwire ended the season with 70 home runs, while Sosa followed with 66.
The record, however, only stood for three years, before Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants notched 73 home runs in 2001, despite failing to reach the 50-home run mark in any previous season.
In the following years, these three players were questioned after being linked to the use of PEDs, which has kept three of the greatest players ever out of the Hall of Fame.
When you think of the Hall of Fame, you think about a place where the greatest baseball players in history are enshrined so they can live on forever as players who changed the game.
McGwire is not in the Hall of Fame, yet, his bat, with which he hit his 70th home run of the 1997 season, is.
Sosa is not in the Hall of Fame, yet his name is enshrined as one of only five players to hit 600 or more home runs.
Whether he takes steroids or not, a player still has read a curveball and make contact. Steroids don’t make his hand-eye coordination better. .
Despite what baseball writers and experts think, these players deserve to be inducted into Cooperstown because, at the end of the day, it’s still a museum.
The same goes for players such as McGwire, Sosa and Bonds. How do you keep Sosa and McGwire, two players who helped put baseball back on the map after the 1994 lockout, and Bonds, the all-time home run king, out of the Hall of Fame? They changed the game forever.
The only solution is if Cooperstown added a “Steroids Era” section to their museum. The players would be categorized as being part of that era, which they should, and also have a spot in the Hall, which they should.
As of 2003, the MLB adopted PED drug-testing, by which baseball players will be randomly tested. It will further progress baseball as a sport, as it says goodbye to the steroids era, an era where home run battles and home run kings lived and an era that Cooperstown should acknowledge changed the game of baseball forever.
micbhern@indiana.edu
