As a teenager, my sports career was filled with watching athletes that I admired taking steroids. I remember watching the famous home run race between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and wishing that I could do that someday. My dad, who is a Los Angelas Dodger fan, proceeded to tell me that I did not want to be like them. ”Why?” I would always ask. He pulled out his 1988 world series video of the Dodgers vs. Athletics. McGwire at the time was on the Athletics with Jose Canseco.
My dad told me to look at McGwire then and now (well 10 years later according the video, 1998). After looking so close at the two contrasting images of McGuire all he said to me was “this is why?”
All throughout high school I remember thinking, I do not care what it takes to be the home run king, I want to do it. The rush of my first home run (which was a grand slam) to put my JV high school baseball team in the lead always stuck with me. Time and time again after that going up to bat wanting to hit another one. Many failed attempts later and a crushed dream of being a baseball super-star, I realize what my dad was telling me.
Steroids are bad.
At the rate that my son is picking up “the game” I need to prepare myself for the same. There will be one day that we are sitting watching a game and he will ask me if he can do that, whatever the “that” is at the time. I hope that I can tell him if he works hard and uses whoever is a super star at the time as an example, he will be able to do that. Today’s super-stars are not the example I want for him,with more and more PED users coming out of the wood work ever single day.
About The Rookie Dad
