Mark McGuire

Who would have thought that Mark McGwire was on steroids when he broke Roger Maris’ home run record? Of course this photo does suggest that McGuire might have been enhancing his performance with something, how were we to know? There’s a lot of talk about what drives players to use steroids, but most likely its the money. Success at a certain level is talking about not just tens of millions of dollars, but possibly hundreds.

Back in the day, baseball players would get chewed up and spit out by the owners. Now that the players are getting a bigger piece of the pie, there’s a little bit more at stake than just love of the game. I suppose if people wanted to make a case in favor of steroid use, they could compare it to Viagra…is that cheating in bed? I don’t know, but until someone starts packing them into Yankee Stadium for a bed room performance, and getting millions a year to screw in center field, the comparison is pretty weak.