Baseball sluggers Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds were accused of using steroids to improve their performance. These players both achieved home run record in the league. McGwire already confessed about his steroid use but denied that he used it to gain competitive advantage while Barry Bonds still refutes in court his alleged steroid use. Other players who were also linked to PED’s like Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and many others showed impressive performances in the field. Many sports writers and other baseball experts made quite a lot of discussions on the pros and cons of using performance enhancing drugs in baseball but they rarely provide scientific proofs of its benefits to the players.

How can we say that using steroids and performance enhancing drugs could help the players hit the ball faster, stronger and more accurate? What percentage of improvement does steroid gives to the athlete? These questions were all answered by a physics professor who shed light on the issue. Roger Tobin, a physics professor at Tufts University discussed how steroids contributes to the increased home runs in baseball. In a lecture entitled “Sox and Drugs: Baseball, Steroids and Physics”, the professor compared the statistics before the steroid era and the 1990’s where baseball players broke home run records.

Victoria Boggiano of The Dartmouth News detailed the findings of Professor Tobin. In her article, Tobin was qouted saying that several players hit between 20 and 50 percent more home-runs for the top players of the past century. That is between 1995 and 2003 where it was considered as the steroid era in baseball. “Babe Ruth’s record of 60 [home runs] was set in 1927,” Tobin said. “Over 71 years, this record changed by one. And then in 1998, Mark McGwire hit 70,” said the professor.

The professor considered the player’s number of home runs per balls in play rather than the strength in hitting the ball. “First you have to hit the ball, which means you have to bat and you have to not strike out and not walk. The reason for dividing it up this way is that whether or not you hit the ball has really rather little to do with how strong you are,” Tobin said. There was an increase in the percentage of home-run balls hit by top baseball players. From 10 percent in the 1980’s, there was an increase of 5% based on statistics. “But then you look at, say, McGwire – his average was 18 percent. There were two years when he was close to 20 percent. Think about it: if you actually hit the ball, one out of every five was a home run,” the professor explained.

According to Tobin, if the player is already good at hitting the ball, the strength he gets from the steroids would increase the bat’s motion. He further explained that a 10 percent increase in muscle mass will lead to 3 percent increase in a batted ball’s speed. Although the percentage of increase in speed is small, it can raise the proportion of home run balls by 30 percent. “Home runs are particularly sensitive to these small increases in muscle mass,” Tobin said.

The professor believes that the use of steroids in baseball gives more benefits to the players as compared to other form of sports like swimming and track and field. Shot putters have been caught constantly using steroids, but the record there has only gone up by a little over 4 percent, according to Tobin. “You don’t see 20 or 30 percent effects,” he added.

The study only proves that steroid is one of the possible reasons why baseball players achieved better performance especially in breaking home run records. The physics professor concluded in his lecture that his study is plausible.

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