A history of steroid and performance-enhancing drug use in major league baseball discusses such issues as the 1994 strike and the current threat of punitive legislation, in an investigative account that features anecdotes by and interviews with such figures as Jason Giambi, Bud Selig, and Donald Fehr. 75,000 first printing. Boston Herald sports columnist Bryant gives the full history behind the steroids scandal that has slowly but steadily enveloped major-league baseball over the past 10 years, a scandal that now calls into serious question the integrity of many of the records set during that time, if not the integrity of the game itself. Bryant begins with the disastrous strike of 1994, which cut short a memorable season and eliminated that fall's World Series. It was from the ruins of 1994 that baseball found salvation in the long ball, whose resurgence came as a result of smaller new ballparks, a reduced strike zone, and a ridiculously lax policy on performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. For example, offenders could be caught using steroids four times before finally receiving a one-year suspension. If players were the obvious culprits, the scandal, according to Bryant, was really the result of interlocking failures: a league that did not have the stomach in the face of record revenues to police itself, a players' union that fought every effort by the league to test its members, beat writers afraid to ask hard questions of the players they covered on a daily basis, and fans, who, fully aware their heroes might be juiced, still flocked to ballparks in record numbers. In presenting this thoughtful, detailed account of what one writer has called "baseball's Watergate," Bryant will bring baseball fans fully up to speed on both the steroids issue and the hoped-for reforms to come. Alan Moores Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Howard Bryant knows more of the subject of steroids than any other reporter I've come across. Juicing the Game is both encyclopedic and a fascinating read." -Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes "A serious book about the serious issues baseball has faced over the past decade." -Bob Costas " Juicing the Game demonstrates a mastery of baseball history and a narrative power that should make this the Sports Book of the Year. Howard Bryant has produced a compelling insiders' account that will finally enable an American audience to understand the global significance of our first real doping scandal. Here is every citizen's opportunity to see how our hallowed national pastime became entangled in the pharmacological enhancement scenarios that will haunt the 21st century." -John Hoberman, author of Testosterone Dreams "I played my whole career in what they're calling the Steroid Era, and now one of the most intelligent, thorough reporters in the business has investigated it." -David Justice, former major league outfielder "David Halberstam is the greatest journalist of our lifetime because of his ability to take the present and make it history. That is what Howard Bryant has done with Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball . He explains how the Steroid Era evolved, puts it in its context, and does so as one of America's most thoughtful columnists. Steroids 101." -Peter Gammons, ESPN Howard Bryant is a columnist for the Boston Herald . His first book, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston , won the Casey Award for the Best Baseball Book of 2002 and was a finalist for the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research.