Steroids in Sports

Running head: STEROIDS IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

Steroids in Professional Sports:

How They Have Tainted Sports

Nicholas Bishop

GE117-E2--Composition 1

ITT Technical Institute

Steroids in Sports:

How They Have Tainted the Sport

In the last few decades a new light has been shed on the image and validity of sports. Due to the competitiveness of the sport and the drive to break more records, to go further than any other person has raised serious questionability of the legitimacy to those accomplishments. While under such extreme scrutiny, sports such as baseball, cycling, and football have all been linked to the use of steroids from exceptional players. This cloud of suspicion has cast a dark shadow on the games and the creditability of the sports themselves. Steroids are bad for sports because they taint the athlete’s career, they taint the sport, and they taint the records in sports.

Steroids have tainted the careers of many athletes. Perhaps the biggest name to be linked to steroids is Barry Bonds. Bonds was drafted in 1985 and played all 22 seasons of his career in San Francesco. Since then, he has been called one of the greatest sluggers of our modern era. In September of 2003, federal agents raided the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) for an investigation into the illegal distribution of steroids to many athletes. Federal agents seized numerous documents showing Bonds’ schedules and his testosterone levels. Bonds did later testify to the grand jury that he had used a clear substance given to him by his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, claiming he did not know that it was a steroid. Anderson later pled guilty in July to steroid distribution and money laundering and was sentenced to three months in jail. Since the BALCO investigation has linked Bonds to steroids, some of these big offensive numbers have been called into question.

Another athlete whose career has come into question because of steroids is former major...