Demonizing Steroids

WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFUL if there were some miracle durg which people could take orally, which would gradually, over time, increase a person's strength, physical and mental endurance, and generally make people physically younger and healthier? It turns out that there is, but the drug, rather than being researched and developed, is being demonized and forbidden. The drug in question is nothing other than a general class of chemicals called "steroids". Primitive steroids were first invented in the nineteen thirties, but received little public attention until the nineteen eighties. If you happened to be a baseball fan during the eighties, you may have noticed that as that decade proceeded, baseball players in the American major leagues started looking bigger and stronger, much more muscular than ever before. The number of home runs proliferated, culminated in the nineteen nineties, when it seemed that anybody who put on a baseball uniform was setting some kind of home run record. The big guys, the natural home run hitters, were hitting them at all time record levels, and even the little guys were chiming in; players who had never before hit very many homers started hitting them as if they too were big boys. It seemed that almost every player on every team was showing up at the ball park with bulging biceps, and bulging hitting statistics. People began complaining about the poor quality of pitching at the major league level. It was assumed that a wightlifting fad was sweeping across the sport, but the lack of much hard evidence for this was puzzling. The big boys with the muscles did not seem to be spending any more time in the weight room than ever boefore. At about the same time, baseball bats made of maple began to appear; they were considered to be more powerful than the traditional white ash models, but it was noticed that they broke far more easily, and were gradually discarded. Amid all the questioning concerning the home run explosion, theories abounded. Smaller ball parks? The baseballs themselves came under scrutiny. Were the new baseball making machines winding the string inside the balls more tightly than the previous hand made balls, making them harder and livlier? Tests were conducted, but were proven inconclusive, but baseballs remained the most likely suspect. Finally, at long last, people began to suspect the truth; the players were juicing, and it was perfectly legal to do so. It was not legal in other sports, including track and field and cycling, and the steroid controversy blew wide open with the Lance Armstrong scandal and similar violations of steroid prohibition in track and field. Baseball, tradition-bound and almost immune to change, joined the anti steroid movement baletedly, and now, at long last, the players once again look like normal ball players, rather than a former governor of California. Thus steroids now have a bad rap and a bad rep, which is just too bad, because with proper research and use, steroids could probably turns us all into stronger, longer lived, longer productively active people, if only given the chance to do so. But, as our athletes go, so goes society.Perhaps one fine day people will take controlled doses of steroids as regularly and and with no more sensation than they now take aspirin or multivitamins, but it will be awhile; the stigma will take time to wear off, and permit a rational discussion of the issue. Until then, we'll all just have to spend more time in the weight room.