By the home run chase of 1998, attendance had climbed back up to 2,353,371 fans over the course of the season, but the the number of fans that would go to support the average baseball team would not pass its record high from 1993 until the 2006 season.

Last season, with steroids under investigation and all the buzz about stricter testing and reform swirling around the league, attendance for the league as a whole jumped by a total of 3,488,145 fans.

Purging the league of steroids was the final act in the circle to entice new fans with more home runs and offense in general, and then make a scandal of it that caught everyone's attention, completely redeeming Major League Baseball from its strike.

This also brought about a new generation of fans who were too young to remember the bitterness of 1994, as well as casual fans who got caught up in the scandal and front page news that baseball had become.

The investigations into the health risks that surrounded steroids also became focal news topics, opening the eyes of many young athletes who felt that steroid use could be done without any adverse effects to their health.  The exposure and subsequent humiliation of some of the sport's best players have been further examples of the social stigma that comes with cheating.

Steroids united fans with great offensive numbers, and then, upon their revelation, united fans against cheating.  Now they have united fans by getting their sport back to the way it was meant to be played.

For all of its evils, steroids did a world of good, and we are better for it.  We strengthened ourselves from this problem like one develops an immunity to a sickness after getting it once.

When historians look back on the steroid era, they will see something resembling the death and rebirth of a phoenix—with the ravages of age being the strike of 1994; the flames being the inflated offensive numbers, shattered records, and government investigations; and the healthy young phoenix that is reborn as the state of baseball now and in the future.

Attendance at games are higher than ever, the sport is gaining popularity in other parts of the world, and to the delight of all baseball fans in this new world, the game will be clean again—at least until the next artificial advantage comes around.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?