Steroids Use in Baseball and Sports

Steroids are commonly used by bodybuilders and athletes of all levels. You will find them in High School sports, in baseball, in football, and, of course, in the olympics. All these sports, and many many more, use anabolic steroids in one form or another. DO NOT be fooled into thinking that any NFL players are natural and drug free. Even retired NFL players admit that at least 70% of their team was using human growth hormone (HGH)!

Even though ancient athletes used herbs and certain foods (such as meat) to enhance their performance, anabolic steroids were first known to be used at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships by the Soviets. The East Germans weren’t far behind in regimented steroid used. The Olympic athletes from the United States were soon to follow as well. At this time, the Olympic committees banned the use of steroids in its athletes. As soon as athletes started getting “caught” using steroids, athletes and their counterparts started developing ways to get around the bans set upon them by the Olympic Committee as well as professional sports organizations and so the battle began. By the end of the 20th century, steroid use was banned in almost every sport, but still widely used, even in by high school athletes.

High school athletes do use anabolic steroids and don’t seem to respond to scare tactics to keep them from using them. Surveys have shown that approximately four to six percent of high school athletes have used steroids and anabolic steroids ^[1]at some point and this percentage seems have been holding strong for the past twenty years (Center for Disease Control and Prevention study) meaning that use is neither as widespread as some media outlets imply nor is use by this group increasing in prevalence.^[2]

Baseball is quite well-known to be a sport that harbors the use of steroids as well. Because of the well-publicized “discovery” of Mark McGuire’s bottle of Adrostendione in his locker, baseball major league baseball employed an anti-drug policy complete with steroid testing guidelines – the last of the country’s major sports organizations to do so.

The first known use of steroids in the NFL was in 1987, but it seems that steroid use in college and high school football was common well before then by a common increase in body mass index from the early 70’s through the late 80’s. The NFL shows similar increases as well.

So, steroids and anabolic steroids are still present in sports even though the organizations do not allow them because since ancient times people have wanted to enhance their performance to gain the prestige that goes along with being great at what they do.