Baseball and Steroids

In January of 2005, former Major League slugger Jose Canseco released a controversial new book entitled “Juiced,” in which he claimed that somewhere between 50% and 80% of all professional baseball players were taking anabolic steroids or other similar performance-enhancing drugs. Canseco was immediately attacked by players, fans, the media and MLB officials, all of whom insisted that he was lying, and accused him of making such allegations because he was either desperate for money, a compulsive liar, or perhaps even a little bit crazy.

But now, just two years later, it is starting to appear that Jose’s accusations may have been right on the money. In the time since his book was first published, many highly respected players, including a few potential Hall of Famers, have either admitted such wrongdoing, been caught red-handed, or at the very least have been seriously implicated in the scandal.

A brief review of the known history of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball certainly shows that Canseco wasn’t just making the whole thing up.

The Mysterious Growth of Major League Players

Historically speaking, the majority of Major League baseball players have never been confused with Mr. Universe contestants. While a few players like Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig were known for their strength and muscularity, they were viewed as mere aberrations from the norm: physically gifted freaks of nature who looked more like they were built of concrete and steel than mere flesh and blood.

By the 1970s and ‘80s, however, weight training, improved diet, and nutritional supplementation had become a fact of life for many of the game’s best sluggers. Players such as Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt and Steve Garvey all trained with weights and had the bodies and the home run totals to prove it. But as big and strong as those players were, they would have been considered average by the late 1990s, when sluggers like Canseco, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi had taken over the game with their 250-plus pound physiques. This incredible proliferation of muscle mass in just a decade caused some fans to wonder exactly what these players were doing to become so big, so fast.

The Androstenedione Controversy

Perhaps the first answer to that question came in 1998. During a year in which he hit a then-record 70 home runs, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire revealed that he was taking an over-the-counter muscle building supplement called Androstenedione. At the time, Andro was a completely legal substance, and it certainly was not an anabolic steroid. Nevertheless, the discovery prompted many observers to question what else McGwire and some of these other large, heavily muscled power-hitters were putting into their bodies.

It would take a few years, but that question would be answered.

Part Two

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds