Steroids In Baseball

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Steroids in Baseball
The game is over and players are taking off their equipment and uniforms in the team locker room. One player finishes dressing into his regular clothes. He pulls his gym bag from his locker without realizing he forgot to zip up the side pocket. Three vials and two syringes go rolling across the locker room floor; He chuckles about his folly and calmly walks over and picks up the contraband and strolls out of the locker room. Everyone saw what happened but no one says a word. This is baseball? When so many other sports are known for large athletes, why is baseball becoming known for rampant steroid use? I believe steroid use is on the rise in major league baseball because of the fear of losing ones job, a growing general acceptance, and the lack of a steroid control program in MLB.
The fact that steroids are widely used in baseball is indisputable. NL MVP in 1996 Ken Caminiti admits to using steroids and claims half of major leaguers are using steroids (Verducchi). Slugger Jose Canseco while not admitting steroid use himself puts the estimate at about 85 percent (Verducchi). Although these numbers are only estimates the actual number could be higher or lower. The fact that there are players themselves admitting the use of steroids, in this case two probable Hall-of-fame players, makes these estimates believable.
First, there is a lot of money to be made in baseball. Unlike the other professional sports, baseball is one of the few still without a salary cap. The best players can receive enormous salaries, sometimes as high as ten to twenty million per season. With all this money up for grabs one player has to do whatever he can to be at the top of his game. Caminiti says “I can't say don't do it, not when the guy next to you is as big as a house and he's going to take your job and make the money" (Verducchi). With this kind of pressure to be the best, there’s no wonder why so many ball pl...