Let's Take an In-Depth Look at the Steroid Era Crisis in Major League Baseball 

Absolutely amazing video

How is Bud in the HOF? Players could have actually shortened their life expectancy because he turned a blind eye, BUT Pete Rose can’t make it in for beating on some games? Pete actually played the game at an extremely high level!

Good video. Also, people forget or never mention the 1999 year was good as well, as McGwire had 65 hr’s for the year and sosa had 63hr’s

I remember reading a book on this matter...I also did a couple of MLB projects while in school at the time...one was on the steroid use in baseball and the other was on the salary cap issue...being a diehard Orioles fan, it was sad to see Palmeiro's downfall...the steroid era is one of many dark periods in baseball...thanks for the insight

Seleig in the HOF really is an insult to baseball. Especially as an A’s fan, he did everything to screw us over and the ownership we have is a direct result of his.

It actually was a fun time to watch.. I personally believe there were a lot more players than known that used. Balco wasn't the only "company" supplying players they just got caught. I honestly belive Guys Like Griffey Jr also used peds.

Amazing work my friend, much love

Great video! Really well edited and narrated.

I’m not even that crazy about baseball but enjoyed watching !

The craziest thing about bonds record season was pitchers didn't even pitch to him. He broke the record even with pitchers intentionally walking him 160 times and pitching around him many times during the season too

Great video. Good look with this channel!

I would say it's easy to blame Selig for turning a blind eye, but baseball was in real danger of irrelevancy in the mid 90's. I see why your prof. deducted a few points as your castigated Selig but didn't give us alternatives as to what he could have done differently and still brought the game back. Great job overall. Looking forward to more of your work.

I remember working my first job out of high school moving furniture in 98 and I certainly remember that summer and the McGuire, Sosa chase for that record. I hadn't followed baseball much but it was impossible to avoid and everyone had the Cards or Cubs on their radio or tv during that time. It was exciting, it was electric, and it's really sad that baseball kind of needed that, and it did, it did bad. But it was unfortunate that it took players juicing to perform at that level and create that much needed moment for the game to garner some of it's popularity again. At the end of the day, knowing everything I know now about that era, I place a lot of the blame on management of the league. It sucks the players felt the need to juice up to compete but on the other hand no one was holding them accountable, they were in every sense given a green light to juice to the gills and blast home runs. At the end of it all, I can't help but feel the most for the guys who didn't want to take steroids or "Performance Enhancing Drugs". It doesn't mean they would have been super stars or anything, but I can't help but think that there were many guys who got left struggling to compete with other guys taking advantage of baseballs lack of rules against PEDs.

Great video, however I must say Bonds’ rapid weight gain and power increase happened after his first 5 or so years in SF

the glory days!!! Moonshots had the fans going nuts!!! I miss it!!

Good video. I contest the expansion of the playoffs being an attempt to bring people back after the strike because the 94 season was supposed to be the first season with the wild card. The main reasons were the expansions had made the 2 division system very difficult to make the post season (and more expansions were on the way), and the fact that the Giants had won 103 games in 1993 without making the playoffs.

Pretty good video. One nit: McGwire's rookie season was not 1986 but rather 1987. He won ROY that year, the year following Canseco's ROY in 1986.

it was always strange to me that fans were upset about the strike, but not so much about assisted hrs. i was 11 in '98 and thought mcgwire / sosa chase was exciting. however, i was old enough to speculate something didnt seem right when bonds started his chase and wasnt that thrilled.

seriously what a great vid, please do more in other sports. ya have something here

Baseball executives and owners were such hypocrites. The game was in the tank in 1994 with the strike. Attendance was down. So they let the guys take the steroids and turn a blind eye to it so the games get exciting , more scoring , and attendance comes back And then after profiting from this, they turn around and throw the players under the bus And as far as the hall of fame , those hitters were hitting off a lot of pitchers that were on steroids as well. “Flash” Gordon’s career was done with Kansas City , and then on the Yankees he starts throwing mid to high 90’s when he’s now 35,36,37 years old

Not a huge baseball fan but this video is really good

90s were special for all sports, MLB/NBA/NHL/NFL, best era in sports history

really great video! i would only have been interested to hear a more extended look into the ramifications of the steroid era. you mention a few times that it cost the league reputation, but I would like to see that point more in depth. but very good!

Overall good video, but a few notes: Mark McGwire hit 47 home runs in 1987, not 1986. McGwire won the Rookie of the Year Award one year after Jose Canseco. Also, the expanded playoff format started in 1994, not 1995. It's important to mention this because on the exact day in 1994 that Selig's Milwaukee Brewers were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, Selig announced that even if management and the players union were to reach an agreement, he would *still* cancel the 1994 World Series. 1995 was the year when us fans noticed that a plethora of players who once had warning track power were suddenly hitting balls over the fence. The overall sloppiness of the 2007 Mitchell Report named some players but left many other obvious users (like Albert Belle) were left completely off the hook. The Mitchell report also conveniently ignored Bud Selig's role in actively facilitating the steroids crisis--a crime for which Selig will likely never be brought to justice. And why would he? The man escaped criminal prosecution time and again, dating back to his breach of contract with the city of Seattle when he brought the Pilots to his hometown of Milwaukee to the collusion scandal of the 1980s, to his federal injunction in which a Federal Judge Sonya Sotomayor ruled that Selig failed to negotiate in good faith with the players union, and thus, declared the strike over and the players back to work. Your professor makes a good point: What you have done? If I were Sotomayer, I would have stripped Selig of his commissioner's title, and sentenced him to a lifetime of prison labor back in 1995. Install a new commissioner who would have the competence to let baseball's popularity recover organically rather than celebrate such obvious acts of blatant cheating.

Baseball has either gone back to this era or done something to the baseballs because they're hitting as many if not more HRs now as they did in that era. People knew back then these guys weren't natural just on how big they were cool with it because the fans like HRs, then they acted like they were against it all along when this news broke.

Baseball was more fun during the steroid era.

What about all the players in the 60s and 70s that took amphetamines? It’s almost like they are looked on as a bunch of mischievous kids and it was just part of the game. They needed to take all those drugs so they could get out on the field because so many of them spent the night drinking. So many of the players that are looked on as the main culprits of the steroid era were huge to begin with. Albert Bell, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, those guys were huge and they could all hit a ball. Steroids didn’t give them that ability.

If by crisis you mean the best time in baseball, then I’m with you.

Surprised this channel hasn't taken off yet, don't give up you are doing a good job.

The most fun era . Loved seeing these hitters

Great concise video on an important sports era!... This was just another example of MLBs absolute inability to police it's own worse problems. Many don't mention that when the "Black Sox" scandal happened, gambling was already a 50 year, league-wide problem that was ignored until a World Series was rigged. There's also "generations" of ignored segregation, amphetamine & cocaine use... Anyway....I'm rambling...lol Great Vid! 🙂⚾

Now Seilg does hold some of the blame in this case and some of the things he did as commissioner weren't great like letting that clown by the Expos run what was left into the ground then buy the Marlins and after their world series run run them into the ground as well. But on the other hand baseball was in decline everyone wanted faster pace sports like football and later basketball and batting averages were going down. See one thing people like in a baseball game is a lot of runs scored sure shut-outs/no hitters/perfect games are cool to see if your team is the one doing it but if it is a one run game it can slow down and drag on. While they did recently put the pitch clock in baseball is still the only popular sport that doesn't have a time limit and so Bud did what any commissioner would when it came to the roids he let it happen as it helped bring back popularity. It was very much like Babe Ruth having his breakout seasons following right after the Black Sox scandal it was the same thing but with the players strike that got so bad the US gov had to get involed.

You sound very young so not sure you lived it..but you pretty much nailed it. I loved that summer as a fan of the BashBrothers…but I agree, now grown I do not want my son to think you need to a needle.

In the 1970s, when guys like Reggie Jackson were hitting homeruns, the thought of steroids had never been brought up. Maybe he was just a natural like Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays, and to name a few.

Great point about how poorly MLB handled the response. The MLB massively over-polices PEDs now. Both the NBA and the NFL have notification time frames for testing that are beyond the detection time for HGH. This is because the leagues understand how PEDs help athletes recover from injury and withstand a grueling season. I'm not saying everyone should be juiced to the gills like MM, JC, SS etc, but if they were able to use these substances under the treatment of the training staff it would save so many careers.

Interesting that you didn't mention Canseco's book "Juiced" published in 2005 in this video essay which was the first insider expose'.

If you haven't read them yet, you should read Canseco's books. You obviously can't take them as the absolute truth, but everyone that he called out in the book turned out to have juiced. He also alleges that Selig knew that he was the most knowledgeable about the, and approached him after the strike was over to ask him to turn more players onto PED's. Also, it's pretty much accepted that Bonds didn't really start juicing until 1999 since he saw how much attention that McGwire and Sosa got. They're great books, but obviously told from a biased point of view. You can glean some more insight into the situation, however. Personally, I don't really care that those players juiced. Before steroids, it was amphetamines, which most old school players (including many HOF'ers) took. Darryl Strawberry talks about them in the "Doc and Darryl" 30 for 30

It was the ball, not steroids that was the primary cause of the HR craze in the 90s and early 2000s. Between 1992 and 1994 HRs jumped about 45% from 0.72 per game to a then record high of 1.07 per game. Runs jumped from 4.1 to 4.9 a game. And BABIP jumped from .285 to .300. And the league stayed at that 1994 level for the next 15+ years. Thats what the common fan refers to as the "steroid era". However it seems very unlikely that a jump that drastic, that leveled out at the new high for 15 years was due to huge percentages of players all beginning to use steroids in same 18 month period, and continuing the next 15 years. A more lively ball being introduced in mid 93 or start 94 is the more likely explanation. The same thing happened in 2015/16 when the league juiced the ball and HR records were broken in 2017 and absolutely shattered in 2019.

You know what... it wasn't a crisis. It was a damn Renaissance of baseball in this country. Those juicers saved the game we love. I'm tired of pretending it was anything less.

I remember hearing from a retired player “steroids don’t help you hit a curveball” and also hearing McGwire say he could have broke the record without steroids. Steroids keep you on the field when without them you couldn’t have been so consistent

You make tables and do sports? Crazy man🙌

I feel like Jose Conseco's book warrants a mention in all of this too

We can all appreciate how legendary Ken Griffey Jr turned out in the steroid era.

The Steroid Era was fun to watch!!! I don't see anything wrong with that Era. W There was the Speed Era in the 60s and 70s, The Coke Era in the 80s. Oh BTW, those are PEDs ,as well. No one kept those players out of the HOF.

Mark M 49hrs Roy 1987 Jose Canseco Roy 1986

This was also a time Jr. Was hitting a bunch of home runs and he was clean

McGwire 49 hr season was 87 . But I’d say 1987 was when everyone began to take notice

Back when baseball was AWESOME. I found out even little guys like Len Dykstra were on the juice and amphetamines back then. Jose Canseco literally looked like the baseball cartoon character on big league chew bubble gum. 💪🏾💉💧

Oh Raul…he’s so cool!!!

The wildest thing I have ever seen was walking barry bonds with the bases loaded in the last inning and giving up a run. Just the idea of that wasn't laughable is still crazy to me.

i certainly think none of the steroid users should go in to the hall of fame.. we can't take their money back from them... but, the hall of fame isn't because you cheated to get better stats.. it's for great players...

My personal belief is this....1) steroids dont help you at all to hit the ball, you have it or you don't. 2) steroids also don't help you throw the ball or help you release or grip the ball correctly while pitching. 3) They help with recovery, strength, etc. 4) Dont think they should have been used, but I understand why. I love baseball and I would take the steroid era over this awful version of baseball.

I love how everyone forget the rampant cocaine use in the 70s-80s. Players would go into the clubhouse to do a quick bump before an at bat.

Of course officials addressed the steroid issue because of Barry Bonds, mcgwire helped save baseball and got along with the media so we’ll protect our golden boy.

Now MLB needs to work on getting a salary cap and getting rid of the bad umpires.

What would make a great follow up is how this weaves in with the history of cheating in baseball in general. There is almost always some sort of cheating scandal going on - sign stealing with phones and garbage cans and substances on baseballs are but two examples. Why does this game have such an ethos of cheating embedded in it? Why do the players go along with it? Why are there no whistleblowers?

Greatest era of baseball I ever saw !!! I could care less about the roids .

I loved baseball in the 90s because of the Jays. I hated baseball in the 90s because of the moving of the Expos. I am Canadian lol 🙂

I strongly doubt that steroids was the root cause of the offensive explosion. Starting in 1994 the balls were juiced. There has been a variation of juiced balls since 1994 to the present time. There was also the tiny strike zone which was incredible small for hitters like Sosa, Mark McGwire and Frank Thomas and of course the advent of maple bats in the mid-90's. I believe Bud Selig and his supporters wanted offense at all cost. I like offense but when some of these players were putting up numbers that were greater then true superstars of the past it got a bit ridiculous.

I love this. If myself at 10 years old knew these guys were in steroids. How can you tell me Hall of Famer Bug Sigel didn’t know. How did the owners, GMs and coaches didn’t know. Come On

I feel like steroids are always going to be a tough issue to tackle. It's alleged that the ones used gave you better reaction time, speed, and muscle recovery and durability- all of which are very important in any sport or physical exertion. Andro, creatine, tren, and any mass/muscle formula popularized in part by baseball's biggest power threats are considered to be a different issue but perhaps they weren't then. And as far as the alleged benefits of the former, reaction time, speed, and muscle recovery and durability can be scientifically enhanced in other ways, some less noticeable or more permissible than others. It'll never be as simple as a measured testosterone boost- Chris Davis got busted on an amphetamine and said it was for his ADD, in short time he was emblematically Baltimore's skid mark. Whether a less noticeable or unbanned drug gives a hypothetical vision or reaction time boost that outdoes spin-rate fanaticism in the next decade is far beyond my prediction.

Well once there was testing put in place and punishments given, that marked the end of the steroid era. It will never go away because you have individuals who should be in the hall of fame but they either have not tested positive or taken a steroid test when they played. So baseball is left in a quandary.

I hate Selig. He gets all the credit for saving baseball in the 90's and passes all of the blame onto the real heroes who were demonized for using steroids when they were the ones who brought the sport back to relevancy. He turned a blind eye to it to allow the game to resurge in popularity and gets elected to the hall of fame. Meanwhile guys like Bonds, McGuire, Rodriguez and Clemens who should have been elected on the first ballot get snubbed. Baseball has a hall of fame full of gamblers, cheaters, liars, and thieves yet leave out guys like Rose who really did nothing shady or wrong and played the game harder than anyone else in baseball history. The MLB really needs to pull their heads out of their ass and give credit where credit is due to the incredible careers of these men who were just playing the game. I don't condone cheating, but sports is full of guys cheating and getting away with it. And wasn't the steroid era fun? Isn't that what sports is all about? Peak athletes in their prime able to perform incredible feats while we watch in awe! The fall of fame shouldn't be a popularity contest, it should immortalize the feats of these tremendous athletes. I mean isn't Big Papi, deservedly, in the hall of fame? If you're going to let one legend who used steroids in, then dammit you better open the flood gates to the other deserving candidates. After all we do not call it the hall of nice guys, it's the Hall of FAME - and you're leaving out some of the most famous and accomplished athletes of all time!

I think the funniest thing about the so called steroid era, is that HRs and offense didnt slow down after testing. 2006 and 2009 are two of the best HR and offense years ever. Thats just more evidence that steroids were not a big reason why MLB had so many HRs in the 90s and early 00s. Offense eventually slowed down by 2013 or so bc the velocity revolution currently at its zenith now just took off back then and caused a dip in runs and HRs.

As a giants fan myself I hated bonds.

I think what is always overlooked in the steroid videos is that bulk is the enemy of speed. Bulk makes you run slower. Bulk will slow down arm speed which will result in slower pitches and reduced bat speed. And of course, bat speed is a huge part of hitting homeruns. That is how guys like Ken Griffey Jr and Darryl Strawberry could hit monstrous home runs. If bulk was the key, those two guys would be struggling to hit 400 foot home runs and the league would be filled with body builders. The reality is that pitchers throw harder and that will cause a jump in home runs. Also, there was a dead ball era in MLB history. Likewise we have a juiced ball era. Steroids make for great stories but the reality is that guys like McGwire and Sosa were going to break the home run record anyway. From the moment McGwire entered the league, he was like a lumberjack. A physical specimen built for hitting home runs. Sosa made adjustments to his swing and tried to kill everything that went over the plate. HIs home run numbers were high but so were his strike out numbers.

They need to bring them back

Creatine! Why not ban caffeine too! Meanwhile 20 years later how many athletes are prescribed adderall!?

I just go back and have to tip my hat at guys who didn't juice and are still seen as legends Jeter, Griffey, Pedro, Rivera, Randy Johnson, etc.

Androstenedione is not roids.. 😅 I mean no disrespect but getting 85% on your masters makes you lucky af…

The steroid era did in fact help put fans in attendance after fans starting falling away after the long strike of the 90’s. Some writers who were young during the time of McGwire & Sosa are now voting in Hall of Fame ballots. They are all for them. But they have to realize there is a code of ethics or Shoeless Joe Jackson would be considered in the Hall of Fame. Now that being said, Pete Rose was caught betting on his team as a manager, not a ball player. So this should only hurt his managerial career- not the playing career. Hank Aaron and Willie Mays said in a 90’s interview that they did use things like caffeine to give them an edge when playing. That if they had steroids in their era, who knows. Yet Gaylord Perry would use Vaseline balls, or Carl Hubble using a spit ball. Ballplayers who got away with pine tar or corks. How many times did they try to implicate Roger Clemens and lost every time in court. Yet they won’t allow him in. His wife was caught with PED’s. Yet I saw a video where they talked about MLB juiced the balls that Babe Ruth hit. Plus Ruth has the short soft ball field porch of the Polo Grounds until they moved into the short porch of Yankee Stadium. I can keep going.

They need to bring them back. Players should be tested and if found negative get suspended. Mandatory steroids would make the game exciting again.

50 years from now, the 'Steroid Era' will be viewed as a weird anomaly of sorts. People will wonder what the fuss was all about. Steroids will then be commonplace....

Bring them back!

such good quality videos at low subs

Honestly, Bonds probably helped save baseball; had he never juiced and put up his absurd numbers, steroids may still be an issue rarely talked about in the MLB.

People always seem to forget that they initially tried covering up steroids by saying the balls were "juiced." They actually used the word "juiced." Baaaahhhhh. Sheeple.

IMO, if Selig got in the HOF, so should the players that got him there...

MLB turned a blind eye to the steroids issue, because the increase in home runs brought fans back to the ballpark after the strike in 1994.

McGuire was out at first.

Honestly, steroids are not that bad in my opinion for non contact sports. Makes things fun and interesting and the only repercussions health wise are on the players taking them.

Folks… just read ‘’The Game of Shadows’’ and you will really understand

I personally don't recognize anything that hitters did during that period. I still recognize Hammerin Hank Aaron as the all-time HR king, followed by the Babe and Roger Maris' record, broken last season by Aaron Judge as the single season record.

Just acouple things I want to say about the steroid era. First, I feel like you implied bonds started doing steroids in the early 90s and I dont think that's accurate. While he did gain size in 95-97, being in his late 20s I think that was natural. It wouldnt be till 99 (the year after he had perhaps a top 3 season ever and nobody cared because of Maguire sosa) that true physical signs of steroid use started to pop up. The guy literally gained half a hat size between the 98-99 seasons. So in fairness to Barry, he really was seemingly doing it in response to everyone else doing it. Not saying he was right, just saying how it went. Second, does anyone really care? Everyone was doing it. The idea that the mitchell report got them all is insane lol. We constantly talk about hitters and steroids, but reality is the pitcher using it benefited waaaaay more. The ability to heel in between starts is way more valuable than some extra power. Just look at pitcher injuries in ten years following the institution the big penalties. The numbers dont lie, pitchers did not pitch as much, they still dont. I think we should definitely hold the players who did it clean, that we know did it clean, should be held in extremely high esteem. But I dont think we make villains out of the guys who did. Dont get me wrong some of them were villains during to lying or whatever, but not the steroids.

The steroid crisis ended any chance for current or future players from reaching the most prestigious records in baseball's 150-year history. It was a temporary fix that resulted in a permanent loss.

What crisis?!.. It’s PROFESSIONAL SPORTS, meaning make the play or don’t.. Literally nothing else matters..

Every time i hear the name Jason Giambi, i get disturbing flashbacks of a gold thong.

They took Jim Thorpe’s metals away for playing baseball for board and keep one summer and it was wrong. Then this Jerk comes along plays countless summers on juice and people congratulates him, makes no sense 😢

Steroids saved baseball. Bonds and Clemens should be in HOF

Let’s make steroids baseball again

Aaron Judge true season HR record holder.

Barry Bonds isn’t the best because he had those numbers in 2001 - It just isn’t fair to past generations of baseballers. Barry’s the best because he did it better than anybody, past or present who was on the same stuff.

I have seen soms pretty convincing stats that Kirby Puckett and Nolan Ryan were very likely steroid users.

I think the steroid era is over blown in baseball. For some reason it was made a big deal in baseball but not in football. And baseball continues to make a big deal about it each time the HOF ballot comes up. To me its just another era like the dead ball era.

I miss the players, but I don't miss the inflated numbers. I'm a huge fan of the history of the game, and this scandal tarnished it badly. I firmly believe that players like Ripken and others would have still helped the game recover. I agree that the era contributed strongly to the one-dimensional aspect of today's game until the rules changes. In addition to the negative impact of the steroid scandal the obsession with certain measurables in scouting have contributed as well to the game we have today. Spin rate, speed of the ball off the bat, and other such stats have also made the game more one-dimensional. Great pitchers are made by their ability to throw different pitches with control and changing speeds, not whether they can throw over 95 MPH all the time. Those skills are just not being taught well since it doesn't get the scouts attention. Aspects of defense and simply the ability to hit for average have taken a back seat to cool stats that make for great graphics, but do not really contribute to making the game eye appealing.

The steroid era is why I liked baseball as a kid. Barry Bonds is the goat no debate

Without steroids, we still have Hank Aaron. Think about that. 🤔

How is there not a modern version of the pills Mark McGwire was taking????

Yes steroids were a sad story in baseball history but not nearly as awful as decades of blatant racial segregation. Having said that, the video was a nice overview of the steroid era.

I will take the Steroid Era over today's era. Today's era will be known as the most boring era in mlb history, the era where pitchers and umpires refused to allow hitters to play the game.