When my son was thirteen he had to write in school every week he is really into baseball and chose to write about the use of drugs by the players. I always wanted to share this with the world because athletes should see how they are perceived out there. They are supposed to be role models. Remember this was written by a thirteen year old for a school project.

Players, or Drug Abusers             January 22, 2013

When you see that in 2001, Barry Bonds, former outfielder for the San Francisco Giants hit seventy-three home runs in one season, doesn’t it make you want to look up the all-time homerun record for one season? You go on Google and search: “ Has any player hit more home runs in one season than Barry Bonds?” An article appears: “Barry Bonds, all-time home run leader, admits to using steroids.” I don’t think it’s fair that players perform better than they should because of steroids: they should be punished for using them.

You may be wondering what steroids even do, and why is it such a big deal if people use them. Steroids are performance-enhancing drugs. They can make you bigger, tougher, and stronger. MLB stars feel like they’re under pressure to play at their best at all times. Steroids help players hit for power, or homeruns.

While steroids can make you stronger, they’re a danger to the bodies of the users. Some symptoms of using steroids are:

. Severe Acne Development

. Tumors

. Addiction

. Breast Growth

. Mood Swings

Steroids are typically injected into the body, so now the user is at risk for STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) such as HIV.

You would think this would cause the players to stop using steroids right? WRONG! The steroid bans evolved in 2010; fifty games for the first offense, one hundred games for the second offense, and for the third offense, a LIFETIME ban! All of the MLB owners, fans, and players seemed okay with this plan (I’m not sure if the players were serious though). It’s players like Melky Cabrera who make me think this.

Melky Cabrera, former outfielder of the San Francisco Giants, seemed like he was going to play a HUGE role on the team. About mid-way through the season, take a guess. I’ll give you a hint; he did steroids, during which was his best season yet in the MLB. The Giants still won the World Series without him though!

This leads me to my next topic, the Hall of Fame: Steroid Edition! There were plenty of players on the Hall of Fame ballot this year that have abused steroids. This is because they came from a time in baseball called the “Steroid Era.” I was glad when I came home and saw that not one person on the ballot made it into the Hall of Fame- this is hard to ignore though:

. Barry Bonds- 763 career home runs, 73 home runs in one season (2001)

. Roger Clemens – career 3.12 ERA (earned run average). Seven – time Cy Young Award winner.

Maybe you think the Hall of Fame should be based strictly on statistics, not whether or not a player used steroids. What would their stats be like after they stopped using steroids, or if they didn’t use steroids at all? Alex Rodriguez, third baseman of the New York Yankees, used steroids until 2008. The next two seasons, he hit sixty homeruns. Okay, nothing changed. Since 2011, he has only hit thirty  -four homeruns. He should be hitting that many homeruns every season: and he would, if he still used steroids.

In my opinion, these players should be removed from the history books. These players didn’t only break the rules of the MLB, but they broke the law! Barry Bonds doesn’t deserve to have the all-time home run record, nor does Roger Clemens deserve to have seven Cy Young Awards.