Most players want to compete on a level playing field without drugs. If their competitor is using drugs they are inclinced to do so alike.
The solution is not difficult.
1. Random drug tests during season and off season. These must be often.
2. One positive test and you have repeat testing immediately by 3 other labs. If all are positive, an automatic suspension of 2 years and large fines.
3. The second positive test after suspension will get the “death penalty” of you never play professional sports again.
It pains me greatly to see the old records being beaten by men using steroids. When old records are beaten legitimately it give me joy and respect for the new champion.
“It pains me greatly to see the old records being beaten by men using steroids. When old records are beaten legitimately it give me joy and respect for the new champion.”
And here is the problem.
I’d actually consider these people acceptable for the Hall of Fame if the records they supposedly “hold” were voided. Henry Aaron was and is the home run king AFAIK, and Roger Maris/Babe Ruth for the single season record (yes, I know about THAT controversy).
With better drug testing, I don’t know if the PED records will EVER be beaten. This is inherently unfair. Or, we do an equivalent to the Saturday Night Live “All Drug Olympics” where ANY drug is legal, and in fact encouraged, by the sport.
The former Giants great was caught up in the infamous BALCO scandal that rocked the sporting world, in which he allegedly took a performance-enhancing anabolic steroid known as ‘the Clear’, which was undetectable by any doping tests.
‘It pains me greatly to see the old records being beaten by men using steroids.’
many of the old records are beaten not by men using steroids, but by those who are healthier than the old timers (as we today mostly are compared to our forebears), and who devote more time to the game as their profession, and who have competed all their lives at numerous levels of the sport; are all of those not unfair advantages that they enjoy compared to the turn of the century players, most of whom smoked, drank, and caroused prodigiously...?
if we revere the old timers records, are we also going to require that later players be as unhealthy as the oldsters were, so as to not muddy the waters when it comes to comparing acheivement...?