Baseball Strikes Out

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 2000s, rampant steroid use across Major League Baseball became the biggest scandal in the sport’s history. But fans didn’t want to hear the difficult truth about their heroes – and the league didn’t want to intervene and clean up a mess it helped make.

We look back at how the scandal unraveled with our colleagues from the podcast Crushed from Religion of Sports and PRX. Their show revisits the steroid era to untangle its truth from the many myths, examine the legacy of baseball’s so-called steroid era and explore what it tells us about sports culture in America.

We start during the 1998 MLB season, when the home run race was on. Superstar sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled to set a new single-season record, and McGwire, the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, was portrayed as the hero baseball needed: part humble, wholesome, working man and part action hero, with his brawny build and enormous biceps. So when a reporter spotted a suspicious bottle of pills in his locker in the middle of the season, most fans plugged their ears and refused to acknowledge that baseball might be hooked on steroids.

Joan Niesen, a sportswriter and host of the podcast Crushed, takes us on a deep dive into an era that dethroned a generation of superstars, left fans disillusioned and turned baseball’s record book on its head. The story takes us from ballparks and clubhouses to the halls of Congress to explain how baseball was finally forced to reckon with its drug problem.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Al, and I'm sure it is no surprise to you that President Trump doesn't like us very much.
0:06.7	He called the press the enemy of the people.
0:09.0	Credential journalists have been banned from press briefings just for asking tough questions.
0:14.3	Trump personally sued news networks demanding billions.
0:18.6	And now, at his urging, Congress has voted to gut all federal funding for
0:23.7	public broadcasting. And I think I know why. I think we all do. It's because real journalism
0:28.7	brings sunlight, scrutiny, accountability. When power feels threatened, it lashes out. And that tells you
0:36.0	just how vital independent reporting is right now.
0:40.0	Here it reveal, we don't answer to billionaires, or politicians, or special interests.
0:45.4	We only answer to you, our listeners, but we can't do this alone.
0:50.2	Stand with us. Support fearless independent journalism that refuses to back down. Donate today. Just visit RevealNews.org slash fearless. Again, that's RevealNews.org slash fearless. Thanks.
1:07.2	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letton.
1:14.1	It's almost midnight in the summer of 98, and the St. Louis Cardo's Clubhouse is jam-packed with reporters.
1:22.3	Everyone is jostling for space, ducking under cameras, waiting.
1:26.9	It was glorious. The circus came to town.
1:30.4	That's Associated Press Reporter Steve Wilsne. He's a part of the scrum.
1:35.0	They are all there to cover the home run race.
1:38.2	Mark McGuire had just hit his 45th homer of the season and is on pace to break the single season record.
1:46.7	I was giddy about it.
1:47.9	I was a little league player who liked hitting home runs, and now to see these guys do it,
1:52.9	and as far as they were hitting it, baseball is best.
1:56.5	But Willstein is there to cover baseball history.
	...

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