A Brief History of How Steroids Destroyed America's Pastime

If you were to flashback 48 years and turn on a radio station or an analog television set, you might hear talk of a man named Roger Maris.

At the time it was 1961 and he was chasing one of baseball’s most hallowed records, the single season home run record. This record was once held by the legendary Babe Ruth. With every home run he hit there was nothing but cheers and applause.

There was no doubt that he hit every pitch with nothing but god given talent. Roger Maris’s pursuit of the single season home run title eventually became legendary; he ended up passing Ruth’s record by just one.

Things are much different in baseball today than they were 48 years ago though. The emergence of performance enhancing drugs, such as HGH (human growth hormone) and anabolic steroids are to blame.

If you were to go back as recent as eleven years there was still no thought in people’s minds that athletes could be cheating.  37 years after Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record; there were two young ball players on the verge of breaking Maris’s record.

Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were two young players that were hitting home runs at an alarming rate. For the course of the entire 1998 season they were hitting with extremely consistency.

It seemed as though that a newer, younger, and stronger generation of baseball players had arrived. McGuire ended up finishing the season with 70 home runs, and to the general public he was a beloved hero.

It was not until years after that Mark broke the record that something started to feel wrong. It was 2001 and yet another ball player was making a run at the record, the only problem was that he was in the latter stages of his career. This run seemed very unlikely for the 37-year-old, Barry Bonds.

This was about the time that people were questioning if the legitimacy of each home run. In fact, because Barry was able to go on to break the record for the final time; his record was put into question.

How was this aging and fading star able to make an impact like this? At the time people were not sure what to believe, was he was really getting better with age, or was he able to find a way to maintain his powerful swing?

Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and dozens of other players each are under investigation for taking a banned substance to help increase their speed, size and strength.

The era of which these players allegedly took steroids and other performance enhancing drugs quickly became known as the steroid era. For baseball, a sport very proud of its history and records, this was a nightmare. Baseball’s records are looked at as extremely well respected and looked up to.

The dilemma Major League Baseball had was deciphering if the records that the steroid users broke were legitimate.

The first official acknowledgement of a player admitting to using steroids was Jose Canseco. Canseco was the self proclaimed “Godfather of Steroids”. After his retirement in 2001 Canseco was able to finally reflect on his 17 year career.

He later released the book “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, & How Baseball Got Big”. The tell-all book detailed his own use of performance enhancing drugs, and names hundreds of other players in Major League Baseball.

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