Baseball Is An American Pastime - 3059 Words

Trey Deitrick Mr. Hubert English language and Composition 23 February 2015 Steroids in Baseball The game of Baseball is an American pastime. During the late 19th century and early 20th century it was the most widely played sport in the country. Baseball back then was what video games and televisions is to us now. Throughout the years baseball has changed in some good ways and in some bad ways. The integrity of the game has been changed in a bad way by steroids. Steroids is what makes the game today so much different than it was back then. Of course steroids have been a controversy in this game for a long time but not to the extent it is right now in the late 90s , and 2000s. The punishments that they give right now for steroid use is†¦show more content†¦Not only are these players, who use steroids and get caught , not able to play the game they love, but will lose out on a lot of money that they could be making during the games that they miss. Alex Rodriguez is a great example of financial punishment for steroid use. The suspension would be the lo ngest non-lifetime ban in Major league history and would cost Mr. Rodriguez more than 31 million in loss salary (Costa,Brian). The MLB has announced that it is going to enhance its testing policy and its punishments for using steroids or any other performance enhancing drugs. The enhanced testing procedure will include a lot more random in season tests. The number of urine tests will more than double. In the enhanced punishments there are at most three violations. A first time violation at the joint drug program will now result in an unpaid 80 game suspension, increased from 50 games.(Calcaterra,Craig). The second violation will result in an unpaid 162 game suspension rather than a 100 game. The third and final violation will result in a permanent suspension from baseball. Players want a fair and clean game, that is why they pushed for better testing and a lot more testing. The MLB commissioner, Bud Selig, was very pleased when the players pushed for stricter policies. Baseball has had its fair share of scandals. For example, baseballs first commissioner, Kennesaw Landis, was brought on to deal with the Black Sox scandal.