The Steroid Era

In baseball jargon the ball is often referred to as a pill, but during a twelve-year span from 1996-2007 when home run production in Major League Baseball surpassed all previous existing benchmarks due to the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs, the word “pill” took on a much more literal meaning. This “Steroid Era” would end abruptly in 2007 with the publication of an independent report commissioned by Major League Baseball in which United States Senator George Mitchell uncovered wide-spread and pervasive abuse of performance enhancing drugs in the sport (Mitchell, 2007). The Mitchell Report confirmed the suspicions of many fans that the game had been tainted and the Steroid Era is looked upon as a blight on Major League Baseball
Following the publication of the Mitchell Report in 2007, Major League Baseball finally enacted harsh penalties for players testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. The first positive test results in a fifty-game suspension, the second carries a one hundred game suspension and the third such result carries a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball (Roberts, 2005). Resultantly, the number of players who reached the milestone of hitting forty-five home runs in a season, which was achieved sixty-three times during the steroid era, has only been achieved six times since. Unfortunately, although effective in stemming the flow of rampant abuse, harsher penalties have not completely thwarted performance enhancing drug use as not a season has passed without at least one player receiving a suspension for a steroid related offense. Some argue that steroids will never truly go away because players will not stop trying to find better and harder to detect performance enhancing drugs to stay ahead of the competition and the league’s efforts to police them (Levy, 2013). The harsh reality being that greed is a powerful motivator and stricter penalties have only served to force players to be more careful not to get caught (Slifer, 2010). Ironically, now once again faced with declining fan support, Major League Baseball is experimenting with ways to increase run production to keep attendance up and several teams have moved their outfield fences in to promote more home runs. These actions in themselves are further evidence that the Steroid Era did in fact help, and not hurt, Major League Baseball. In conclusion, although steroids have become a lynch-pin for all that is wrong with Major League Baseball, research shows the oft-maligned Steroid Era benefitted the players, owners and fans due