This is in the most part why I am against steroids being legal. When a sport doesn't properly test or if they were to become legal then they become the norm. It becomes accepted that to compete you have to use them. That attitude flows down from the professionals, to the amateurs, to the juniors. I remember when I was a 12 or so being convinced that I needed a pair of Air Jordan II's to be able to compete on the court. I was positive without them I simply could not compete. I see no gain for a society which see's kids replacing a desire for Air Jordan's with that of roids. Much like Morecowbell I have no moral issue against steroids, it is simply another form of cheating. If you get away with it and you can sleep with that more power to you. You beat the system. But when we change the bar for it to become the accepted norm this reverberates throughout the sport as a whole and I see no advantages in this.
I never once said that greenies was not cheating, nor did I condone it's use. I do however think that if you are comparing the physical advantage of both drugs steroids is way more effective. Greenies are said to help fight fatigue, increase alertness and help reaction time, we all know the affects of steroids. Mike Schmidt admitted that he and other players took greenies, I'm pretty confident his statistics would have remained the same regardless of that drug. However would Big Mac and Bonds still have beat the HR record without steroids? That's the question. I don't know either way, ESPN showed numbers that showed McGwire's stats improve after his admitted steroid use. He also hit 48 HR's his rookie season so he was always an excellent power hitter. Bond's jump is much more radical, there is no question that something made him a bigger and stronger and the best power hitter of all time. Again, I have no way of knowing if Bonds, Sosa, Giambi all these athletes would or would not have done the same thing in their career's with or without juice.
What? Maybe I'm way off here, but why the hell would they take the drug if it wasn't going to help their performance? You just stated the effects it has on a person, but you don't think it helped elevate their stats at all? Sure, it didn't mean they could crush the cover off the ball like Big Mac, but the effects that your describing did help the player physically. You said so yourself. Being able to maintain your A game indefinitely allowed their stats to get to where they were. Without the drug, they would have fallen off. Hence, better performance.
Lawrence Taylor was said to have done cocaine before a game because he thought it upped his performance, I doubt very much that it did, he was just an amazing athlete. I really don't think that greenies had that much of an impact on a players stats at all. I guess to be more clear I don't think they had the staggering affect of say 70+ HR's in a season. They are banned so the experts feel they give an unfair advantage, my main point was I didn't think you could compare the advantage given by greenies to the advantage given by anabolic steroids.
I'm against steroids not because their abuse gave Bond's head its own satellite, but because it denied players who had the ability a chance to play. Guys who were leap-frogged by someone who was an equal in ability until the juice tilted the tables. People who worked just as hard, rehabbed the same injuries, or put up stand-out numbers and were put to pasture because the competition came to training camp looking like a Greek God or showed no effects from a major injury. While I understand with stakes that high players are going to do whatever it takes, that does not make it OK for illegal substances to be taken.