by Chris Torgersen

Created on: July 01, 2009

The various steroids scandals that have hit baseball over the past several years have rocked the sport and reshaped public perception of it. The 1990s and early 2000s have begun to become known as baseball's "steroids era". Each time we think we have heard the worst of it, some new superstar is outed as a user or former user, to the point where many fans now look upon all players who played during those years with suspicion.

And rightly so. Some of the most convincing denials - most notably those of Alex Rodriguez - have come from players later revealed as users. It is impossible to tell with any real confidence whether any particular player was clean, just as it is impossible to tell what the exact effect of steroid use was.

Baseball, in truth, has a long history of performance-enhancing drugs. For a good forty or fifty years now - nearly half of what is considered baseball's modern era - numerous players have dabbled in or become regular users. From the days of greenies, when players popped speed pills in the hopes of improving their reaction times (arguably a more potent way of improving one's chances in baseball than bulking up with steroids), players have sought any edge to get ahead.

The world of a baseball player is a fiercely competitive one. The threat of losing one's place in the starting lineup or rotation, or even one's roster spot, is a constant one for most players. With owners and upper management willfully turning a collective blind eye to what was going on in the locker rooms, players faced no major consequences and had much to gain (or so it seemed) if they used. Those who chose not to use could feel proud of their moral high ground while relaxing on the dugout bench or a flight back to Triple-A - or so it must have seemed to players faced with the choice.

Ultimately, the Hallworthiness of those superstars who used steroids will be decided upon by the Hall of Fame voters. They seem to have passed judgment on Mark McGwire already. It appears that the once-certain Hall of Famer's chances of getting in are approaching zero. Ten years ago, he was famous enough to make guest appearances on sitcoms. Nowadays, he keeps himself far from the spotlight and his name, along with the names of Barry Bonds and now Alex Rodriguez, has come to represent a tarnished era of baseball history.

The truth, however, is that very little of baseball's history is unblemished. For most of the first half of the twentieth century, an entire segment of the population

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