Like most things in the life, sports have controversy. However, the some of the biggest surround steroid users, and if they should be in the Hall of Fame for their respected sport.

In the MLB, where the biggest portion of the issue comes from, players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, among many others, who all had good careers,  either fell off the Hall of Fame ballot or struggle to receive votes each year a direct relation to their usage with steroids.

However, we need to look 40 years down the road, if a parent wants to teach their kid about the sport of baseball, a good step is taking them to the Hall of Fame. It wouldn’t be the same without being able to show them the all-time homerun leader, and record holder for most homeruns in a single season, Barry Bonds. This goes for many of the other players who don’t necessarily hold records, but still held important roles in the sports history.

If a player is good, no matter how much help they had from steroids, they deserve to be held in their own honor in the Hall of Fame. This, when one gets down to it, all takes at least a bit of skill to achieve. Do you think all 762 of Barry Bonds home runs were because he took steroids? Some of them were because he was a good baseball player.

However, there are many other good cases against it, with very good counterclaims to go with it.

The biggest counterclaim is simple, if you cheat, you don’t deserve to be recognized with stardom. This makes sense, because someone who used steroids their whole life could get into the Hall of Fame over someone who was a good player all of his career, without his stats being influenced by steroids, which wouldn’t be totally fair to the clean player.

To go along with this, the league has recently changed its suspension policies, making the third suspension a lifetime ban, though, players can appeal the ban. One player, for Met Jenrry Mejia, was suspended for life for usage. However, this does not do much good if the usage goes under the radar of the league, and is not caught up in the randomized drug tests.

Steroids or not, honoring the games best is important for the young fans of the future to learn and understand what the games history is all about, no matter what it was influenced by.