Friday, February 14, 2014

Substance Abuse

If you haven't heard before, there was a baseball player named Alexander Rodriguez that was suspended for 162 games and the postseason the was going one at the time.  The reason that he was suspended was for doping in order to improve his baseball performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CavPBwBPGZQ

       In the video you see his supplier testifying that "A-Rod" had been taking performance enhancing drugs in order to improve performance.  In the full interview, he explains how the process worked.  He explains how he would text A-Rod when and how to take the drugs.  He even explained to him how to beat the tests.  It's kind of sad that people would go to such an expense just to be better than their competition.  It's even sadder that their competition is more than likely playing the sport as an honest player.  It's much better to be someone who plays at the rate of an average player than trying to beat the system.  Is there anything that you want bad enough that would make you want to cheat in order to win?  Do you think that you would have a price to sell your morality?  What do you think of people that do this?  Does it make them any less of a person?  Does it make you any less of a person that you are judging this person?  Should this be allowed?  Obviously people had to vote on this in order for it to be a rule, but are they right?  Whatever the answer, I hope we're doing it right.

3 comments:

  1. I totally agree with you, taking steroids in order to improve sports performance is an immoral and unethical act. Honestly, it wasn't until I read this entry that I thought of "juicing" as a form of substance abuse. However, I think the definition of substance abuse involves using any drug that can be used beneficially for another purpose and abusing its availability. This gets even worse when you have "enablers", people like that man in the video that knew that the baseball player was doing something wrong and actually aided him in that task. I believe that it is right for this type of behavior to be outlawed and should be continued to be reinforced.

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  2. Personally, I don’t think cheating is the right direction when it comes to winning. People that use substance abuse example doping that you mention, to win in a competition isn’t morally right. Regardless of the situation, I think substance abuse shouldn’t be allowed at all. People take advantage and do anything possible to win a competition, etc. Instead of playing by heart and winning the right way, they think of their ego.

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  3. I think that if a person wants to competitively play a sport then their skills and abilities should not be enhanced because then, it would not be THEM playing the sport.Sports are meant to resemble something wonderful and give the common man something to look forward to, but when players go illegal and begin to do all sorts of things to "better their chances" then they should no longer be part of the Sport. A-Rod and every athlete that has used substances to aid their performance should not be allowed to pay anymore. The stakes are not high enough to discourage them from doing it, so we might have to raise them.

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