What did you think in 1998?

I'm breaking this topic away from the main baseball HOF thread, because I'm interested in this specific question, doing some mental time-traveling of my own this morning as I got ready.

Baseball writers are catching a lot of flak, as they do every year at this time, for not uncovering the steroid scandal - until they did, via Tom Verducci's bombshell in SI.

I don't recall that steroids crossed my mind in 1998. I did start to sour on the home run chase at some point because I started to figure, looking at home run totals the last few years leading up to that, including McGwire's 58 home run season, that the ball was juiced. And I think a lot of people who remembered 1987 probably thought the same thing.

What did you think?

 

I seem to recall having known about it. I was just a teenager, but it made sense to me - you use steroids, you get big and strong, you hit the ball farther.

I always thought the reason the story never came out was because nobody would go on record and there was no hard evidence, and no journalist wanted to face a libel suit.

 

I thought impeachment was a ridiculous waste of time that hurt the country.

Still think that.

 

I thought I knew what the words "trolling" and "lying" meant ...

 

I'm not here to talk about the past.

 

I thought then as I do now that the majority of the players were using something and didn't care a that they were.

The question is, how could you not think something was wrong? Steroids and supplements were not some hidden secret.

 

What a cute, sweet girl. With a solid family structure behind her, she'll surely avoid the excesses of Hollywood.

 

I do remember that '98 was smack in the middle of what seemed like a golden age of magical supplements. Everyone who cared enough about their physique to exercise - not me - was taking creatine, Andro, whey protein, Ripped Fuel (aka "ephederine," which ended up killing multiple athletes) and whatever else EAS and similar companies were rolling out there. It seemed perfectly plausible to me that legal supplements were transforming these guys, because everyone I knew believed that legal supplements were going to transform them, as well.

 

Thought these two starry-eyed kids would be together forever:

 

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10261642/mlb-hall-fame-voting-steroid-era

 

I thought that the players were probably using whatever they could get their hands on.

But the drug era also happened to hit at exactly the same time as people's understanding of what to do and how to do it in the weight room exploded and things like pylometrics moved out of the exotic and into the mainstream.

A change of thinking also happened. Baseball players, in particular, weren't expected to lift weights and do exotic training. That flipped in the late 80s.

Steroids aren't magic. What they do is let people recover faster. So all those guys hitting it hard, needed something and baseball has always been a drug-infused sport. Taking steroids was a natural step from greenies, etc.

 

Between newspaper gigs, I quit a dishwashing gig mid-shift just for a chance to see if McGwire could tie Maris. That's what the '98 Chase meant to me. The story is longer than that, of course.

Bottom line: McGwire grounded out to second.