Barry Bonds Use Of Steroids In Professional Sports

On August 7th, 2007 Barry Bonds became Major League Baseball’s all-time leading homerun hitter by hitting his 756th homerun of his career. 3 months later Bonds appeared in court on 4 counts of perjury and 1 count of obstruction of justice of lying about taking performance enhancing drugs (PED) back in a court hearing in 2003. This resulted in a lifetime ban from MLB, being stripped of his record, 30 days’ house arrest, and having his name tarnished forever. Bonds is one of many professional athletes who has been caught taking PEDs, but thousands of athletes get away with it every year because of the flawed professional sports systems set up today. It doesn’t matter the sport, there have been PED busts in just about every major sport worldwide;

Professional athletes practice and workout every day to be in the best shape they can and to perfect their craft either on the field/court/arena/track. “Using PEDs is a shortcut in sports making body muscle grow faster while increasing body endurance” (Jost2). This trend in pro sports is increasing rather than decreasing. Ever since the official ban of steroids in the Olympics in 1976, the majority of professional sports commissions followed. Since the ban there have been over 500 busts in baseball, 480 in track in field, 200 in football, and over 150 in swimming, boxing, and soccer. Jere Longman recently stated that over 60 percent of pro athletes use steroids and a large majority of athletes in the 2012 Olympics in London failed drug tests. “Its all about who you know and how much you’re willing to sacrifice” Longman stated. Most athletes who fail drug tests never get prosecuted because of their name and reputation and something needs to be done about this epidemic sweeping through the sports

Kids are getting smarter and are starting to realize if they don’t cheat then will have an unfair advantage to the many others who are. Moreover, many people would argue that the scientists and doctors conducting these drug tests on professional and semi-professional athletes are being paid off by their bosses and agents to relay false information back to the sports commissions. Tony Bosh a personal trainer did such a thing for over 15 baseball players back in 2005, but then leaked all of the information to the public resulting in the biggest PED scandal in sports history. The solution to many of these problems lies within the drug testing establishments where the fraud is taking place, if you take out the lies and the pay offs many more people will be caught which will scare athletes from even taking PEDs in the first