Do Steroids Help Or Hurt The Game Of Baseball

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Do steroids help or hurt the game of baseball?

Can you recall your first real experience with America’s Greatest Past-time? I have played baseball since I was old enough to pick up a bat, but oddly the image of Kirk Gibson pumping his fist triumphantly after hitting the game winning homerun in game one of the 1988 World Series is my most vivid and earliest recollection. The Los Angeles Dodgers went on to win that series in five games against the Oakland Athletics, riding Gibson’s emotional homerun the entire way. However, there was another, yet little talked about homerun in that game. The Oakland Athletics right fielder, Jose Canseco, had launched a grand-slam in the second inning of that game that was responsible for all four Oakland runs.
When you see the name “Jose Canseco” what are the images that come to mind? Arrogant? Wife beater? Criminal? How about STEROIDS? Canseco is the self proclaimed godfather of steroids in the modern game of baseball. Was he using performance enhancing drugs before that night? Did the effects of those drugs enable him to hit that monster grand-slam? Should he have even been allowed to play? If not, then Gibson might have never hit that emotionally charged homer to win the game. So are these drugs really beneficial or harmful to the game?
Steroids have a wide variety of legitimate uses in medicine. They can be prescribed to increase immune function, reduce inflammation in asthma and arthritis sufferers, or even subsidizes the male hormone levels for men who can’t produce testosterone themselves. Generally, most athletes are in search of something else. Steroids drastically increase the rate at
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which one can gain muscle mass, increasing strength and stamina. Some athletes even believe that they can help improve their fast muscle twitch fibers, enabling them to react faster. With all of these acquisitions average players with moderate skills are escalated ...