Professional Baseball Cheating: Controversy Or Steroid?

Since the beginning of professional baseball. Cheaters have found a way to take advantage and cheat the game in some shape or form. Whether it’s through injecting illegal substances into their own bodies to intentionally lose baseball games to get money. Whatever way these athletes cheat, we still wonder the same question throughout the years. Should they still be recognized for their records and overall career or just be cast aside and forgotten? Well baseball has had many different commissioners and many different punishments throughout the years of cheating. With the many different punishments, It is hard to decide how players should be punished in todays game. Especially if it can affect the sport's popularity and potential future.

There have been other player's who have broken records and could of easily been hall of fame players if they haven’t tried to level the playing field and take advantage of the game of baseball. Other big time names besides Sammy Sosa and Mark Mcgwire that came out of that era who were caught using performance enhancing substances was Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, and Alex Rodriguez. All of these players were good candidates for the hall of fame. Some of the players still eligible for the hall of fame are Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. In the latest voting ballot done in 2017. Barry Bonds got 53.6% of the vote and Roger Clemens got 54.1%. That's over half of the voters who think even with cheating that these players deserve hall of fame, recognition, but many people don’t see those two players reaching the 75% mark needed to be inducted (Baseball Hall). Just like Sammy Sosa and Mark Mcgwire, Barry Bonds were trying to also break the homerun record and did. In 2001, Bonds would hit seventy-three home runs for the San Francisco Giants, breaking the three year record held by Mark Mcgwire. Bonds would also break Hank Aaron’s all time home run record later on in his career (Baseball Reference). Barry Bonds would become a record holder in two major homerun categories. With these records now in the hands of cheaters like Barry Bonds. Some old record holders like Hank Aaron and Roger Maris get