The Major League Baseball claims that steroid era is already over. Even Jose Canseco, who divulge the rampant use of steroids in the league many years ago, had also said that steroid era is gone. However, former Commissioner Fay Vincent has a different view on the status of steroids in the sports. He believes that the problem will still be there since manufacturers of steroids, HGH and other performance enhancing drugs are always looking for ways to beat the current testing of the league.

Fay Vincent told Ray McNulty of TCPalm that Selig’s claim that steroid is not a problem anymore in the league may not be really true. “I don’t think that’s the case. The tragedy of sports is that the chemists are going to be a problem for a long time.” In the previous interviews Selig told the media that he was proud of the changes he made in the league as well as the way he handled steroid problems.

The major problem of the league now is on how to cope up with chemists who are creating new performance-enhancing drugs. Since there are already reliable test for anabolic steroids, many of the professional athletes including baseball players are shifting to the use of human growth hormone because the current tests can’t effectively detect this substance. HGH can only be detected using blood tests but the major league is still using urine tests to determine if the player is doping. Another problem is the creation of several designer steroids which most manufacturers alter the chemical composition to make it undetectable during laboratory tests.

The commissioner is also skeptical on the actual number of baseball players who are using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. “I’ve had a player tell me that a drug test is an intelligence test. There is no test for HGH. There are a number of athletes taking steroids with a doctor’s prescription. So I’m skeptical about how much drug use is still going on,” Vincent said. He wrote an article last month for the Wall Street Journal which details his views on the use of steroids in sport. It was titled “Doping Has No Place In Sports: A good left-handed pitcher should be worth more than a good blood chemist.”

As for McNulty, the current steroid policy of the league had made a major impact. It can be clearly seen in the decline of home run performance for the past 5 years. If the data will be compared to the years 1998 to 2001, the current performances of baseball players are way below. In the last decade many baseball legends like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa contributed much on the home run in baseball. However, it was also the period where the use of steroid is rampant. These players were all involved in the use of performance enhancing drugs.

For Vincent, the decline in the stats could not be attributed alone to the implementation of steroid testing. “I don’t know if steroid testing alone explains the outstanding pitching we’re seeing, beyond the drop-off in home runs,” said Vincent. “I’ve been looking at the box scores, reading the batting averages. You see a lot of .220s, even .125s. There doesn’t appear to be as many great, all-around ballplayers out there,” he added. He also noted that there are some players who should not be playing in the league thus contributing to the low statistics. “One of baseball’s dirty little secrets is that it over-expanded. There are guys playing in the major leagues who probably shouldn’t be,” he added.

The use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone by baseball players will be difficult to curtail. It is not just about being bigger and stronger but due to the fact that fans doesn’t care about whether the players are cheating or not.

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