#DiamondDebates: PEDs

Whole New Ballgame is a new exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum that chronicles the changing nature of baseball from the 1970s to the present. Using the artifacts, photos and videos from the Museum’s collections, a new and wider interpretive approach examines the game and its culture as a whole. The game’s athletic achievements and evolving nature is celebrated and explained, but so too is fans’ presence and input.

Barry Bonds blasts a moon shot that all but disappears into the night sky. And the fans love it. Or at least they used to. But that was before Bonds’ performance was tainted by what has become a topic of major controversy in major league baseball: Steroids.

Since the late-1990s, the word “steroids” has become a buzzword synonymous with sluggers like Bonds. After the offensive explosion in the mid-1990s – which some believe was driven by the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs (PEDS) – Major League Baseball (MLB) started cracking down heavily on banned substance. MLB has made it clear that they believe steroids have no place in baseball.

In 1996, a whopping 17 players hit 40 or more home runs. The 1993 season saw only five players hit that many long balls. The span from 1996-2001 saw at least a dozen players per season smack 40 or more homers. In that same span, attendance at major league games went up 44 percent.

Players like Mo Vaughn and Juan Gonzalez hit balls that seemed like they’d never come down. In 1998, fans went to watch a battle between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to break Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61. Some believe the race between the two sluggers is what revived interest in the game. Shortly after McGwire set the record at 70 in 1998, fans saw Barry Bonds break it again in 2001, hitting 73 home runs in the season.

However, it appeared that much of this new-found power was unnatural. In the Mitchell Reprt, the findings of an investigation performed by United States Senator George J. Mitchell in which he investigated the use of PEDS in MLB, many of the prominent power hitters during the mid-1990s were named as suspects of using steroids. Vaughn, Gonzalez, Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds were all named in the report. Of the 13 players to hit 40 or more home runs in 1998, eight of them have been linked to steroids.

And it wasn’t only home runs that contributed to baseball’s rise in popularity. Other exciting changes came to the game, too. Wild Card teams were added in 1994, allowing one team per league that didn’t win its division to compete in the playoffs. In 1997, MLB added interleague play. Building the thrill of the postseason, the Wild Card Game was created in 2011. Two more wild card teams were added, and the wild card teams would face off in a pair of play-in games to determine who would advance in the playoffs.

Steroids remain controversial in MLB. We still hear news stories about players who test positive for PEDs. Such substances are banned from the game, and players who use them are breaking the rules.