Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball

I generally shy away from most sports books. But Howard Bryant has done a masterful job explaining just what has happened to our beloved national pastime. His analysis encompasses not only the rise of steroids and other 'performance enhancers' but answers the questions...why? how? when???! His coverage of labor negotiations, the umpires strike fiasco, the birth of Long Ball adoration, and scathing portrayals of the commissioner and club owners does the best job I have read in making sense of the past decade in baseball. It is a 'must read' for most american sports fans and definitely any baseball nuts!

Although I had a ton of other reading that I had to do, I picked up Juicing The Game from the library, and once I started it in earnest (instead of flipping around), I could not put it down. Mike Wallace notes (on the back cover) that the book is both 'encyclopaedic and fascinating'. That's well said. If you care about Major League Baseball at all, then you will enjoy reading this book and getting 'up to speed' with all the different angles on the steroid problem rampant in baseball. Even if the subject puts you off, I encourage you to read this book. I have to admit that I didn't pay much attention because I figured the users would get busted and disciplined in one way or another... but that never happened. Why didn't it happen? This book tells you why (incompetence on the part of MLB's leadership and obstuctionism on the part of the union are perhaps the main culprits). Bryant takes some significant time in the beginning of the book to set up the context for the decade's debacle, and it's worth it, because the reader needs to know why Selig is commissioner when '94 comes and what his objectives are, as well as the union's position. The author does a great job with each of the various threads to be explored - the strike, creatine, 1998's pursuit of Maris and the resultant andro issue, and the figure of Barry Bonds. Of course, if nobody used steroids, there wouldn't be a problem, but Bryant does a great job showing readers that the game's leadership (as well as the union's leadership) bears the lion's share of the blame for the rampant 'roid use and the resulting fouling of the record book. Fans who give known steroid users standing ovations should get some blame, too; after all, if the fans chose to punish the users' teams by not buying tickets, the owners would be dead serious about the 'roid problme. There are some heroes: Frank Thomas, Curt Schilling, and the other players who were vocal about quashing the problem should be lauded for speaking out despite a climate of pressure to keep their traps shut, as well as Reggie Jackson for doing the same. Overall, the game loses, though. If baseball returns to normalcy (as I think it has begun to - hey, a 'small ball' team just won the World Series), then what will happen 10-20 years from now? We'll look back at '94-'04 and say -- "oh, that didn't count". Bryant quotes some folks who call this Selig's Watergate. The comparison is apt, but there's more dirty laundry too - and that should not be neglected. Steve Fainaru did an excellent series for the Washington Post highlighting MLB's "new ballpark" shell game, as well as the whole Expos fiasco. Who loses on that money scheme? Yup, you guessed it, taxpayers. And guess which stadium deal is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) stinkers out there? Milwaukee, owned (until very recently) by the Selig family. Go to the Washington Post and read it -- that's another scandal that deserves to be heard. Really that's two scandals

This is an excellent book that every serious fan of the Game should read. Much more than just about steroids, this book is a history of baseball from 1994 -2004.

This year's revelations about rampant steroid use in Major League Baseball has escalated to the point that virtually every professional who played during the past decade automatically comes under suspicion (especially the power sluggers). As a longtime baseball fan, I've found this perpetual witch hunt irritating and have rapidly grown tired of the media obsession and with the subsequent inevitable and often irrational rants by politicians and sports fans. Even more galling is MLB Commissioner Bud Selig posing before Congress about his "strong" efforts to clean up the game, and his hypocritical tough posturing proposed through the media after the hearings. These are tough times for hardcore fans, and many of us would like to bury our heads in the sand and just enjoy the current pennant races. But that has become impossible. Jose Canseco's "tell all" book, the February Congressional hearings, and media coverage have all put baseball's steroid scandal on the front page of the nation's sports section. Steroids headlines another landmark moment in baseball history-akin to the gambling scandals (personified by the 1919 Chicago Black Sox) as well as the demarcation of an era when power hitting proliferated beyond reason (radically opposite the "dead ball era" of the early 20th century and the "pitchers' era" of the 1960's). But to follow the complicated story through ESPN and print journals only leads to confusion and misperceptions. Thus, Boston Herald sports columnist Howard Bryant comes to the rescue with his remarkably perceptive Juicing the Game that provides the necessary background and historical perspective to understand the issue-making this the most timely baseball book of 2005. Bryant primarily frames his narrative around the decade that follows Major League Baseball's unfortunate 1994 strike that canceled the World Series that season, but to create an accurate picture requires a great deal of background. Bryant paints this in concisely (covering MLB's recent commissioners, influential owners and executives, major figures in the player's union and umpire's union, and the issues of that strike) before moving on to what Selig referred to as "Baseball's Renaissance" but will more certainly go down as "Baseball's Steroids Era." Recently most of the fan talk has centered around Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, and other power sluggers who have admitted steroids use whether inadvertently or intentionally. Bryant delineates pertinent details on these players and others to give a much clearer visual picture of the issue, but he also astutely selects earlier indications of baseball's changing climate. Just how does a relatively light hitting Brady Anderson all of a sudden slug 50 homers in 1996? While MLB tried to pass this off as evidence of a livelier ball, smaller ballparks, improved nutrition, and weight training, the clarion call had been sounded all around MLB and its minor leagues. Using his journalistic skills and wide-ra

An outstanding chronicle of the guilty parties responsible for the current problems in major league baseball over especially the last ten years. An indictment of many from the top down. Turning your back on problems so as not to sacrifice $$$$ of profit for control of a big problem in baseball. Who do you trust anymore?