Chipper Jones Said He Considered Using Steroids

Atlanta Braves Star Chipper Jones told AOL Sports that he played his entire career clean, but at some point a few years ago he had considered using steroids.

Jones told reporters,

“You see peers doing it. You see contemporaries on other teams doing it and putting up numbers. But at that point in my career, while I didn’t have kids yet, and I thought, I don’t want to jeopardize their lives (because of people’s reactions) one day.”

Jones addressed the issue of performance enhancing drugs and baseball after the Atlanta Braves team doctors gave the team their yearly talk about what substances to avoid for risk of failing a drug test. He brought up the topic again after Ryan Braun’s 50 game suspension for PED’s was overturned on appeal.

Jones said,

“I feel like I know Ryan pretty well—he would’ve been one of the guys who never would’ve considered to have done it. If he went to the lengths that he did to clear his name, I believe him. I just don’t know how someone could be so negligent. If he did (use a banned substance), he got lucky. If he didn’t, he was rightly vindicated.”

Jones said that due to Major League Baseball’s random testing policy less than 1% of the players are using PED’s while just a few short years ago up to 20% were on the juice.

Jones said,

“You’ve seen what happens to the reputations of the guys who even remotely are considered to have done it. It’s so not worth it,” Jones also said players can tell who isn’t clean. “Let’s just say there’s an aura about them,”

Do you agree with Chipper Jones that less than 1% of athletes in Major League Baseball are using Performance Enhancing Drugs?