Mlb

MLB: Mitchell, Lies, BALCO

What ever happened to respecting the game and playing just because you loved it? Its clearly not that way anymore in the new age of Major League Baseball, rightly dubbed as the Steroid Era.

Everyone has heard of Barry Bonds and how he supposedly took steroids that his trainer received from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative(BALCO). The most popular drug being shipped out of the BALCO labs these days are Human Growth Hormones; one key reason why is because it is undetectable by drug tests.

George Mitchell was hired to investigate the rumors that other pro baseball players were taking similar illegal performance enhancing substances. While several players have tested positive with such drugs, December 13th was a dark day for the MLB when Mitchell publicly named nearly 80 players. The list of players is mixed of players in the midst of their careers and players that have retired. Some big name players such as Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, and Hillsborough’s own Gary Sheffield were mentioned in Mitchell’s 309 page report.

Other than possibly ruining these players careers, exterminating any chance of them making it to the Hall Of Fame, what is the deeper impact of this investigation?

I am on the varsity baseball team here at Hillsborough and I find it extremely unfair for men to be injecting themselves with illegal substances, while I’m conditioning everyday after school starting four months before my season starts. This report also affects high school baseball players because the people mentioned could have been kids favorite players. Where does that leave the honest student-athlete? Does he still want to play pro baseball knowing that he could be a disadvantage his whole career?

I’m not saying that every person mentioned is guilty of taking illegal substances, but there are still a good number