My response to a recent article that raised the question: Who gives a crap about steroids in baseball?
Let me try to hit this one out of the park for you....
Your son/brother/nephew/uncle/father is an up-and-coming ball player. He is good. Very good. Good enough to get interest from professional teams, and get signed to go play in the minor leagues. He seems like someone that could be headed to the major leagues and the big money, fortune, and fame of same. But unfortunately for him he can't seem to win the job over the muscle bound jock that holds the job at that level so he toils away in obscurity for 3 - 5 years, never making a decent income, never getting up to the majors, and hating life travelling around in buses and second class transportation and housing.
Now, you might say that he's getting paid to play a game and that even the amount that he gets paid for minor league play isn't that bad. Maybe, maybe not. But surely the period that he could make a reasonable income at playing the sport is a small one. If it doesn't happen, then he'll need other skills and education to fall back on, which we all would hope he got while going to school. Hopefully he has networked and made connections that will help get him a job when it's all over.
Later you find out that the reason the jock(s) up in the major leagues was(were) able to hold onto the job is that they took steroids. They kept going several years after they should have been gone, taking the millions that were available to them while keeping the other players that might have taken their job down in the minors. Ok for them, but sucks for your relative, right?
Lets go a little further, your relative knows that steroids are providing an edge to the guys ahead of them on the rosters, so they decided to get the same edge themselves. It's their body, what's the harm?
Well, there's harm to cartilage that gets broken down quicker. There's damage to essential organs. There's highly agressive behavior that could lead to domestic violence at home or in relationships along the road. And oh, yeah, it's illegal and against the rules of the sport. But, never mind all of the harm or potential harm, the potential for a few million dollars in payout is worth it right?
How about your other relatives that see the stars of the game and want to emulate and be those stars. They see the drug users and ignore the do as I say, not as I do message and decide that if their hero can handle drugs than so can they. They ignore the health risks, they ignore the behavior risks, and do it anyway. And if a little helps, surely a little more will help more, right? Until muscles are literally falling off bone, bone is rubbing bone and doing permanent damage to the body, etc. Who cares that they might die much earlier, or that their quality of life later is going to suck, it's their decision, right?
Does this help answer why we should 'give a crap' about steroids in sports?
