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Pro Juice

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When baseball writers cast their votes for the baseball Hall of Fame this year, they failed to elect a single player—the first time that has happened since 1996, according to ESPN, and just the second time in four decades. Among the list of rejected players were absolute titans of the game, including Roger Clemens, the league’s only seven-time Cy Young award winner, and Barry Bonds, the league’s only seven-time MVP and owner of baseball’s single-season and career home run records.

Sammy Sosa hit 609 career home runs—eight on the all time list. He, too, failed to make the cut.

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The common denominator? Steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

Neither Bonds, Clemens, nor Sosa has admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), though all three have gotten in hot water legally and publicly over the last decade during steroid-related court proceedings. A player needs to earn votes by 75 percent of members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to make the Hall of Fame, but none of the three, each among the most accomplished players of all time, even cracked 40 percent. (Sosa, who according to a New York Times report in 2009, tested positive in 2003 for PEDs, received a mere 12.5 percent.)

Other PED-related scandals have plagued baseball in recent months, but isn’t the only sport implicated. Lance Armstrong may be the most famous alleged doper in the world right now. Following the release last fall of damning evidence by anti-doping officials that he was juicing, Armstrong was banned for life from competing in Olympic sports and stripped of his seven Tour de France Titles. (What is it with 7, anyway?) Reports say he is considering admitting to doping publicly in hopes of restoring his eligibility—perhaps during his interview with Oprah, airing Jan. 17. But even Oprah’s numinous, redemptive powers won’t get Lance his medals back.

Still, a funny thing happened on the way to the crucifixion. For all the finger-wagging against PED use, a counter-argument is emerging. Steroids and PEDs, it says, should be legalized. Or at least de-stigmatized.

“This fake moral outrage about the ‘disgraceful state of competitive sports nowadays’ that serves as a running dialogue every time an athlete is busted for steroids is just about played out,” wrote sports columnist, Jen Floyd Engel, for Fox Sports, in August. “The fact is almost every single argument against performance-enhancing drugs falters when viewed in light of how we live the rest of our lives.”

Whether that’s true or not, Engel isn’t alone. Secretive, even cautious at first, the pro-steroid argument is growing in confidence, and in prominence.

Read the rest over at the new Motherboard.VICE.com.

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