Example research essay topic: Cheating The Sport A Baseball Tragedy - 1,470 words

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Cheating the Sport: A Baseball Tragedy Commercial baseball has long become a distinctive form of an economic contest. Unlike most economic contests, demand in baseball arises more from interest in observation of the contest itself (e. g. a race or a match) than in the outcome of the contest. Being observed by the millions of faithful fans, professional baseball becomes a mere tragedy in the context of everlasting discourses regarding numerous issues. From the critical point of view, there are various reasons for why baseball loses its attractiveness, however, the major reason is cheating, embedded in many different forms, namely sabotage, doping and match-fixing.

Ethically, cheating, modern baseball undergoes nowadays, is typically harmful or fraudulent to varying degrees. Fixing matches for gambling gains is fraudulent and harmful to those who lose money as a result. These sorts of behavior violate most religious and other ethical codes, but the desire to win or to make money is so great that in many cases ethical codes have a limited ability to restrain cheating. In more extreme cases, these actions violate civil or criminal legal codes. Bribing players and officials is typically illegal, as is assault. Moreover, cheating undermines interest in any sport.

This is itself an interesting and testable hypothesis, although there is no empirical research, only evident facts of baseball decline. From the economic perspective, contestants win if their performance is better than that of their rivals. Reducing the performance of rivals may be as effective a means to achieving this end as improving one's own performance. In some sports, this is an accepted part of the game, but often it frustrates the wish of spectators to observe opponents exercising skills to the full and is accordingly illegal under the rules of the sport.

Typically, organizers employ umpires or referees to monitor and punish sabotage activities. However, sabotage may also take the form of deceiving officials. In the context of competition between firms, sabotage may be thought of as an act of raising rivals' costs (Salop and Scheffman, 269). In the context of an internal labor market, sabotage may be one kind of response to the use of tournament incentives (Lazear, 563). In the first case, sabotage is clearly beneficial to the perpetrator since it weakens competition. However, in the latter case the effect is ambiguous, since, although the sabotage may have a direct effect on expected returns by raising the probability of winning the prize, if the sabotage indirectly affects the productivity of the firm then this may, in fact, reduce the expected income of the firm (League) (Konrad, 155).

For this reason, Lazear suggested that employers (baseball players) will reduce the spread between winning and losing in order to ensure that co-workers cooperate. A similar argument can be applied to a baseball competition. The year of 1994 evidenced the first signs of baseball decline the strike reveals the already known but avoidable peculiarity of professional sports money and business. The MLB owners wanted to put a salary cap on emerging salaries. Of the three major sports (baseball, football, and basketball), baseball was the only game without a current salary cap. The salary cap would have eliminated the inflation of rapidly rising salaries made by the players.

It would also have created more parity in the league. It would force some teams not be able to purchase the best talent money could buy. This would give many teams opportunities to contract quality players, as opposed to many on one team. However, the MLB players union denied the salary cap, and logical strike led to the cancellation of 921 games as well as the World Series, which was the first time it has not been played in modern baseball history.

In addition, it also led to a delay into the following season. Simultaneously with sabotage, baseball experienced and still experiences significant problems with doping. Critically doping has probably been the biggest single problem relating to cheating in baseball. Doping may be defined as the ingestion of illicit substances or use of illicit therapies. Practically, substance abuse involving alcohol and other narcotics is banned because the athletes, including baseball players, are held out as role models, often for children, and the abuse undermines this role and reflects badly on the sport.

Using performance-enhancing drugs is, on this view, a problem largely because of the fear that such activities will percolate down to other forms of drug abuse among junior athletes and create a much more widespread problem. In many ways the actions of the sporting governing bodies to ban these substances are a form of self regulation necessitated by the concern that without it governments might turn to statutory regulation, however, it has never to be in baseball. While sabotage and related forms of cheating have been a perennial problem, doping is essentially a recent phenomenon. Early cases of doping in baseball involved taking potentially dangerous cocktails, such as brandy mixed with cocaine, whose impact on performance is still considered questionable. However, the development of synthetic drugs, such as amphetamines in the 1930 s and hormones (steroids) in the 1950 s, created a clear link between consumption and improved baseball performance. According to available evidence, baseball witnessed alternative methods for improving performance including blood transfusions.

However, doping incidents in baseball have occurred not only with performance-enhancing substances and methods, but also with recreational drugs, notably cocaine and cannabis, and even alcohol. General public did not have an idea regarding the real doping trends within baseball until 1998 when Mark McGwire broke the single season home run record, which had stood for 37 years (Snyder, 38). His 70 home runs was an incredible feat. Only 2 players had hit 60 homerun's in the 127 years of major league baseball prior to McGwire's season. The infamous player admittedly took androstenedione, an over the counter supplement with metabolic properties that have been described similar to steroids. This led many to believe the worst, which would be steroid use in baseball.

That notion was just a thought until ex-Most Valuable Player award winners Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco admitted to taking steroids after there careers ended in 2002. Caminiti also went on to say that he hypothesized that 40 - 50 % of the players in the league today are currently "juicing up" (Ibid, 39). Evidence also supports Caminiti's theory. The 50 home run plateau has been reached as many times (18) in one season since 1993 than it had since the development of the sport over one hundred years ago. Players today are hitting 146 % more homerun's than they were in 1933 (Taylor, 211).

Again in 2001 McGwire's record of 70 home runs was topped by the legend of Barry Bonds. Bonds hit 73 homers that year (Kahn, 84). Accusations have been made to Bonds taking steroids, but were never taken seriously until this year. Barry's trainer, Greg Anderson, was arrested for the manufacturing and distribution of Balco, an anabolic steroid that had no way to be tested for. Bonds has not been found guilty of taking Balco, but the signs are there and so is his means of attaining it (Taylor, 217). With the use of steroids baseball's record books are tarnished.

The use of performance enhancing drugs has turned many fans off the sport. Knowing that players are cheating has forced fans to lose their trust and support. Once again, of the three major sports in the US, (baseball, football, basketball) baseball remains the only one that does not test its players for anabolic steroids. Players feel that testing would be an invasion of their privacy and refuse to include it in recent collective bargaining agreements. Old-fashioned, native and original in all senses, baseball will always be a big memory in nations mind. Being bigger than life itself at some point, players and the sport became suddenly piece of drama and regular news.

Baseball has seen a huge transformation because of the strike in 1994, continuous scandals and doping issues. Fans are fed up with what many call a business rather than a game. Without fans, baseball does not have enough revenue to sustain itself: no revenues, no salary, no players, no game. Although there are still millions of supporting fans, the sport is not progressing, it is merely transforming from Americas great pastime into Americas Past. Bibliography Lazear, E. 'Pay Equality and Industry Politics', Journal of Political Economy, 97 (3), 1989 Salop, S. , and Scheffman, D. 'Raising Rivals' Costs', American Economic Review, 73, 1983 Konrad, K. 'Sabotage in Rent Seeking Contests', Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 16 (1), 2000 B. Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, Boston: Beacon, 2003 Kahn, Roger.

The Boys of Summer. New York: Perennial, 2000 Taylor, B. 'Losing to Win: Tournament Incentives in the Major Baseball League, Journal of Labor Economics, 20 (1), 2002

Research essay sample on Cheating The Sport A Baseball Tragedy