Former major league player and manager Bobby Valentine spoke to Sports Illustrated about performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and had some interesting thoughts.
He was asked directly if players using PEDs would be good for sports.
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“Probably, if you want to see the best out of your athlete,” he responded. "If it's not harmful to the athlete."
There are health risks associated with PED use, which is why Valentine also added that the drugs need to reach that point before they become widespread. He believes in the near future, PEDs will have no harmful effects on the body and players should be allowed to take them.
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He also discussed players today compared to players when he was managing in the 1980s and '90s.
"Now, what I think a lot of the athletes are probably doing is they're understanding what that limit is and they're staying underneath the limit," he said. "Still performing extremely well. Still having their performance enhanced — which I don't think is that bad. Because again, as a fan, which I am now, we want to see great performance. To recover quicker, I'm not so sure it's a bad thing."
Valentine, who is now the athletic director at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, went on to compare the stigma that steroid use carries to an "old wives' tale" from when he was playing that lifting weights would hinder your performance.
“This idea that because it’s a drug, and you’re taking it from the outside, that’s bad. But there’s a lot of really good drugs out there that we do take that make us feel better and perform better, and I think these PEDs that people talk about, that are performance-enhancers, will eventually get into the mainstream,” he said.
