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It seems that society places so much pressure on these heroes, too, that to appear larger than life, drugs are often the way they cope with pressure and stress. They make themselves "larger than life" with steroids to help reduce the pressure and the stress of their profession and their managers.
This may not be a public safety issue in the larger aspect of wearing seat belts or not driving after drinking, but it certainly is a public safety issue when it comes to the morals and ethics in our society - especially children. Children do imitate their heroes to a large extent, and baseball players, along with other professional athletes, are heroes to many children (and adults). Thus, children may get the idea that if their hero uses steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, so should they. This is a moral and ethical issue in that it teaches children that cheating is OK as long as there is a reason for it, such as grabbing the home run record for a season as Mark McGuire did. Children get the very real message that McGuire did a wonderful thing, and now it is extremely suspect that he did it on steroids. If it was OK for him to do, then it is OK for them to do. Unfortunately, this can lead to an eventual breakdown of morals and ethics. The black and white between good and bad has become a grey area that is hard to distinguish and even harder to teach and illustrate.
In addition, many players still will not admit what they did was wrong, and some even feel what they did was acceptable in today's society. One retired player Chad Curtis, told Sports...
'If you polled the fans, I think they'd tell you, "I don't care about illegal steroids. I'd rather see the guy hit the ball a mile or throw it 105 miles per hour'" (Caminiti Comes Clean"). If this is the case, then society and baseball are sending the wrong, unethical and unsatisfactory message to American children, and it could come back to haunt society in the future.
This is much more than a sports issue. An issue of ethics, morality, and truthfulness faces American society today. Athletes use drugs to be "the best" and they lie about it to the public, and perhaps even to themselves. It sends a message to the public that some people consider themselves above the law or above morality. This is the wrong message to send to any society, especially one that places its professional athletes on very tall pedestals. Performance-enhancing drugs are wrong, they can be very dangerous - even deadly, and they should be banned from baseball - as should the players that use them.
References
Author not Available. "Caminiti Comes Clean." Sports Illustrated.com. 28 May 2002. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/special_report/steroids/
Bodley, Hal. "Palmeiro Suspended for Steroids Policy Violation." USA Today. 1 Aug. 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/orioles/2005-08-01-palmeiro-suspension_x.htm
Jenkins, Chris. "Players Admit Steroids Changed Baseball. USA Today. 15 March 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2005-03-15-steroids-mlb-cover_x.htm
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