Steroids: A National Molehill
“The illegal use of performance enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game.” (Mitchell 8). These were the opening lines of the “Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball” (hereinafter known as the “Mitchell Report”) written by Senator George Mitchell and made public on December 13, 2007. The Mitchell Report was the culmination of an investigative era in the mid-2000s into the golden era of baseball, the 1990s. Despite the fact that steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are present and used in other athletic forums, the United States Senate believed it to be necessary to use the resources of the American taxpayer to investigate the scourge of steroids in baseball. In 2007, the FBI was found to have illegally expanded the Patriot Act, the United States Supreme Court upheld the partial-birth abortion ban, Greensburg, Kansas is wiped off the map due to an F-5 tornado, a bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapsed during rush hour traffic, and the Virginia Tech massacre occurred. The United States Senate, however, believed it more important to figure out why and how Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s homerun record. This begs the question as to why the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs by athletes, particularly professional baseball players, is so notorious and nefarious that it demands hundreds of investigative hours by the United States Senate. There is no suggestion in the entirety of the Mitchell Report that any player ingested or injected performance-enhancing substances against his will. There is no suggestion in the entirety of the Mitchell Report that any player died or was killed while under the influence of performance enhancing substances. Words such as “fairness,” “purity,” “integrity” and “validity” are used when describing...