PEDs: The Savior of Baseball

Mason Propper

PEDs: The Savior of Baseball

The steroid era saved baseball.  There I said it.  Now, I’m sure you are reading this thinking, “What is he talking about?” “These athletes hurt their bodies for the entertainment of fans.” For just ten minutes, understand that these athletes made the decision to take this drug and by taking it they did no personal harm to you.  Flash back to baseball in the late eighties and early nineties.  When asked to name the greatest hitters of all time, people often resort to the big names: Babe Ruth, David Ortiz, and Pete Rose.  People never bring up big names from the late eighties and early nineties because baseball was not the national pastime it is today.  Over the course from 1980 to 1995 there were five strikes (the work strike not the baseball “strike”) and one lockout that canceled the 1994 postseason.  These were bad years for the MLB.  Baseball started again in a shortened 1995 season and attendance dropped 12% across the league during a stretch where clubs kept ticket prices down.  Fans still lacked the desire in 1996, when attendance was about 9% less than the season of 1993 ( John-Erik Koslosky).  Then in came Big Mac, Sammy, and Bonds, and with them, hope.

Baseball was in desperate need of an identity at this time.  Hockey had fights, basketball had dunks, and football had big hits.  Baseball did not have anything to stand out from the rest.  The games were long and the action was few and far between.  Most fans did not pay to go to a baseball game to see a 1-0 pitcher’s duel.  If they wanted to see that result, they would have just watched soccer.  Baseball needed something that would separate it from the others.  Mark “Big Mac” McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds all helped baseball become the game of the long ball.  Once these men entered the league and hit success, attendance started climbing as fast as baseballs flew over the fence.  Baseball was saved.  Fans were raving about Mark McGwire’s five-hundred foot homerun in St. Louis and Sammy’s that left Wrigley field.  In 1998, also known as the homerun race, these two men hit a total of 136 homeruns combined in a season, Mac with 70 and sammy with 66.  Both surpassed the previous untouchable record of 61 homeruns in a season.  Baseball was exciting because these men were conquering unheard of feats.  In 2001, the year Bonds beat McGwire's already untouchable home-run record, attendance increased 44% from 1995.  League revenue grew from $1.4 billion in 1995 to $3.7 billion in 2001 ( John-Erik Koslosky).  Everyone was happy and Baseball was back and better than ever.

However, all good things must come an end at some point.  The league found out that these athletes were cheating and cracked down on the use of performance enhancing drugs.  These once great figures are looked upon as cheaters and liars.  Baseball has become, in this most recent decade, a battle of the pitchers, where hitting 30 homeruns is an accomplishment.  Baseball will never be the same.  And that is the sad thing.  Our kids will never see such an exciting era of the sport of baseball.  No more big brawny figures to look up to and certainly no more seasons with 71 homeruns by one player.  But there is hope.  Baseball now knows what the fans want and that is homeruns and lots of them.  Baseball will adapt to make the game more like the era in which baseball was saved from an uncertainty of identity.