Much of my life has revolved around sports in some capacity or another. I started playing organized baseball and football at the age of six, and competed in athletics until I graduated high school. Now, participating in sports is more of a hobby for me. It’s something I enjoy doing with the pressure dialed way down and friends with which to enjoy a friendly competition, whether that is on a course, court, field, diamond, mat, pool, or track.

I believe I can trace my love of sports back even farther than when I started competing, all the way back to the sports memorabilia stores around Terre Haute that my dad started taking me to basically as soon as I could watch. I loved collecting trading cards and action figures, and loved looking at each player’s statistics before I even knew what most of those stats even meant. I’ve also majorly lucked out in that I have been able to witness some of the greatest athletes in the history of their sports. The first basketball team I really remember watching was The Dream Team in 1992, perhaps the greatest team ever assembled in the history of professional sports. I have a fading scar on my left shin I earned at Wrigley Field as a teenager in 2001. My childhood bedroom likely looked a lot like that of Ray Finkle, except without the notably sociopathic touches.

But being a sports fan in our current culture is a lot different than it was for me growing up, when the games seemed honest, pure, and without the notable blemishes that dominate storylines in many sports. But perhaps no blemish has been highlighted, underscored, and overly emphasized as has the issue of performance enhancing drugs.

I think the first time I ever heard the word “steroids” came in the early 90s when professional wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon was indicted and put on trial after being accused of distributing steroids to his crop of professional wrestlers in the WWF (now known as WWE). McMahon was later acquitted of all charges and has gone on to build his global empire in the years since.

Still, I didn’t actually grasp what steroids were until just a few years later when the dialogue extended to “real” sports, primarily baseball. In 1998 the country marveled as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in one of the all-time great player battles of all time as they chased down the single-season home run record of 61 established by Roger Maris in 1961. I turned thirteen that summer and home run fever really grabbed the nation and seemed to help reignite interest in baseball following the labor strike in 1994 that cost fans not only the end of the season but the entire playoff slate, including the World Series. Ironically in 1994, Ken Griffey Jr. was on pace to shatter Maris’ record before the season ended, delaying the epic chase four years until the Summer of ’98 that saw McGwire set a new benchmark at 70 home runs.

Sosa also broke the record, hitting 66 homers, but McGwire won the battle that year. In 2001, Sosa would etch his names into the record books by becoming the first player in league history to hit 60 home runs in three consecutive seasons. In fact, the scar on my shin from Wrigley Field is from the night Sosa set that record against the Milwaukee Brewers.  That same year, Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s single season record by belting 73 home runs, and in 2007 Bonds would break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record of 755.

But throughout the last decade, talk of performance enhancing drugs has gone from being a dirty little secret to a public epidemic and it would seem that no sport is immune. Former track and field gold medalist Marion Jones would be forced not just to relinquish her multiple prizes, but she actually served time in a federal prison for lying to investigators about her experience with PEDs. Players in all major American professional leagues have been suspended for failing drug tests related to PEDs. In recent weeks, cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his record seven Tour De France championships and banned from the sport for life after giving up in his fight to clear his name in relation to doping. The steroid issue in baseball even reached the United States Supreme Court in recent years, and a number of athletes at this year’s Summer Olympics in London were busted. So the issue clearly is not resolved, and it would seem that to many athletes the risk of getting caught using PEDs is worth the reward.

Debating whether or not the use of performance enhancing drugs in profession is right or wrong is not the entire issue for me. For me, the saddest part is waking up and finding out that yet another fond childhood memory has been erased from history like it never happened. Am I supposed to pretend that Lance Armstrong didn’t win those seven races? Am I supposed to forget about the summer of 1998 when Sosa and McGwire were hitting bombs out of the ballpark? What about 2001, when I watched Sosa set his record in person as my gashed shin spat blood over the stone of the steps at Wrigley Field?

My scar is fading, but my memories can never be erased. Still, I feel for fans in today’s cutthroat world of professional sports, where they’re shown scandal after scandal and watch as their heroes are erased from history one by one. I have a feeling that’s going to leave a much bigger scar.