Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports has an excellent column on the 10th anniversary of McGwire’s (then record-breaking) 62nd home run, which came of his (alleged) steroid-enhanced bat 10 years ago.
Aside from its failure to share TV revenues fairly, baseball’s turning a blind eye to the “steroid era” is the worst thing that’s happened to the game since the 1981 players’ strike and 1994 owners’ lockout.
Long-time Royals fans will remember that the summer of ’94 was the last great run for your boys in blue. After running off a 10-game win streak that August, baseball was shut down for the rest of the year. And we began using the words “big market,” “haves,” and “have nots” in our sports vocabulary.
But steroids brought the fans back. In most cities, anyway. They still haven’t returned to Kansas City or Pittsburgh, and were they ever in Miami? Chicks dug the longball.
Sure, the Royals were owned by a trust for most of the late 90s and early 00s, and poor management and drafts also hurt, but a lack of big hitters and big payrolls changed the game in K.C., likely forever.
Sorry to ramble here, but all this recalling of 1998 kind of struck a nerve. Mark McGwire should be ashamed of himself. The Maris family still wants its single-season home run record back. I say we give it to them.
Jamie Quirk Fan Club 