1. According to Chafets, how widespread is a drug abuse among professional baseball players?
In the text, Chafets writes about how and when the use of this types of drugs were found in baseball players. Athletes would find whatever that increases their performance and healing period. Athletes live under the pressure to win the match, to be the best, to be well-known so widespread have become a drug abuse in a way that athletes find helpful and convenient at the time of competing because it gives them an extra boost in the game. This type of drug abuse is still questioned by athletes to be consider moral.
2. What is Chafets’s response to the charge that “steroids are the game”?
Chafets response is that even though steroids and anabolic are used by baseball players, the game have changed during the years. But these factors does not alter the game in general and steroids does alter the game. Many athletes recur to drugs to increase their chances to win and it exists more athletes that use this drugs than then society can ever imagine, so statistics change because the game is no longer “real” or honest. Regardless baseball is loved by US citizens.
3. What does Chafets mean when he says that both baseball and the Hall of Fame need to “replace mythology and spin with realism and honesty”?
The author is exposing a sense of irony and sarcasm when he states “replace mythology and spin with realism and honesty”. He is explaining that the drug abuse gave more strength and endurance to the athletes so they are as comparable to the “gods” of the mythology. In addition, he states that this similarity needs to change into a more realistic and honest perspective because in real life the athletes did not gain that fame from their own effort and sacrifice, dishonesty was the root of their fame.
4. What is Chafet’s response to the charge that if it allowed players to use performance-enhancing drugs, the Baseball Hall of Fame would set a bad