The Greatest Cheaters Ever – The Steroids Era

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My grandfather had Babe Ruth to cheer for.

My father got to watch Roger Maris.

I have the steroids era.

One by one, the heroes and legends that I admired have fallen off their pedestals.

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled back and forth in 1998 for the home run title. I was glued to my television screen watching them beat the Roger Marris’s record of 61 home runs. Then in 2005, I was watching television again, but this time they were testifying in front of congress about steroids.

Roger Clemens led my beloved Yankees past the Mets in the 2000 World Series. In 2008, accusations that he used performance enhancing drugs in 2000 surfacned.

Alex Rodriguez was on pace to beat Barry Bonds for the most career home runs. He was going to be the player that didn’t need steroids to do it. Then after 553 home runs, we find out that he was using steroids.

Now, it’s Manny Ramirez who’s suspended for fifty games for using a banned substance.

They all had their denials – I didn’t know it was banned, I didn’t know I what I was injecting into my body – but their statements just make them look more dirty. They sound just as bad as the politicians that have been caught cheating on their wives and taking bribes.

But, we know we’re being lied to. We know a lot, if not most of the baseball players in the past ten or twenty years were using steroids. We may not want to believe it, but the evidence keeps growing.

There’s a good chance that there’s players that are using human growth hormones and other performance enhancing drugs today.

Of course, the owners, the teams and Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig should step up to the plate and perform stricter testing, find out who is really juiced and ban them for life.

My only question is “who’s next?”

I’m not the only one that is suspicious of every player that has stepped on to the field in the last twenty years.

It’s not going to stop me from going to the games or rooting for the Yankees every night on television, but what am I going to tell my grand kids? I got to see the greatest cheaters ever?

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Originally posted on Section 59.