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In addition, there were other reasons for the increase in home runs. The Marlins and Rockies entered Major League Baseball as expansion teams in 1993, creating openings for twenty pitchers who wouldn’t likely have otherwise made a Major League roster. In 1998, baseball expanded again with the addition of the Devil Rays and the Diamondbacks. That’s another twenty pitchers to dilute the numbers. In addition, outside of the Marlins, the other three expansion teams played in ballparks that favored hitters (in the Rockies’ mile-high altitude case, greatly favoring hitters).

Plus, so many other organizations built new ballparks that also favored the hitters. The Texas Rangers played in Arlington Stadium (which favored pitchers) until 1994, when The Ballpark at Arlington was built. The new park favored hitters. The Orioles played in Memorial Stadium (a good pitcher’s park) until Camden Yards was built in 1992. Presto, the park caters to batters.

I’m fairly certain that there are other, legal technological advances that have helped batters, including vision-correction eye surgery and the use of videotape. So, I’m still not willing to place too much blame on anabolic steroids for the statistical imbalance in home runs and the baseball record books.

I do not like it that players who played after 1995 like Manny Ramirez, Todd Helton, Mark McGwire, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome, and Larry Walker all have higher slugging percentages than legends like Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays.

But yes, everyone looked the other way during the growing steroid scandal. There were pitchers lasting into their forties, seeming not losing any velocity on their fastballs. There were pitchers—plenty of pitchers, as it turned out—that were juiced. And yet, managers said nothing. Major League Baseball did nothing. As Bryant recounted in Juicing the Game, “Though no one in baseball had any real education about andro, the Cardinals organization nevertheless released a statement that absolved McGwire of any wrongdoing, a message that was buttressed by Bud Selig.”

Did baseball profit too much from the home runs, particularly the 1998 chase by McGwire and Sosa, to investigate the problems that baseball was facing? Did baseball create this mess by failing to act initially, beginning in the late 1980s, when Jose Canseco hardly made a secret of his success?

It was the biggest baseball story in a decade, yet it was mostly swept under the rug for years. It was Jose Canseco, incidentally, who was the chief whistle-blower. His 2005 book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits and how Baseball Got Big, was dismissed by many in the establishment, but probably will be seen as a valuable historical document decades from now. Canseco said the biggest names in baseball knew of the problem, and that some of the biggest players in the game were steroid users.

This time, it wasn’t just a professional league that conspired to hide information. It was all of us. It was the reporters and broadcasters, blindly defending the users, and attacking or ignoring people like Canseco, Ken Caminiti and others. It was the Fantasy players that thrilled to watch the home runs, and all the fans. It was the organizations, which turned a blind eye, and opened their clubhouses to entourages that enabled players to allow individual trainers into locker rooms and team planes.

I can’t blame this one on the commissioner. I really can’t. There were good, valid reasons for the increases in offense, apart from the steroids. And since the commissioner was hit square in the face with a problem, he has not run from it. He has attacked it, albeit with a delicate balance. Selig has been genuinely troubled by baseball’s steroid problem, the one negative in a decade full of growth in the industry. He has won concessions from the players association, and has instituted far tougher policies than most thought possible. And although the cheaters will always manage to stay a step ahead, progress is being made. Baseball’s effort to punish those caught using steroids