The most controversial part of modern baseball history is easily the steroid era. Cheating in major league sports is something that is shunned upon by 99% of all major sports fans, 99% of the time. But that 1% of the time where cheating may be reasonable is when it stops the four major sports from turning into three. 

Major League Baseball was taking a turn for the worse in the late 70s to the early 90s. In the mid 90s, a sudden spark of interest ignited baseball into America’s pastime once again. Twenty years and numerous failed drug tests later, we wonder: did steroids save baseball?

NO SCORING = NO FANS

From 1971–1995, the entertainment level of the MLB made the sport a complete snoozefest. The lack of high-scoring games, constant three-up/three-down innings, and absence of home runs made for a good three to four hours of  background noise for your father’s afternoon nap. The majority of people were not invested in the games (with the exception of the 1993 addition of the Colorado Rockies). Within these 25 years of monotonous blooper singles and routine pop-ups, the MLB averaged a meager 17,286 runs scored per year (about 550 per team and only 4 runs per game). Also, there was an average of only 3,208 home runs in the MLB from ’71–’95 (around 104 per team and 0.64 per game). Just three players reached the 50 home run mark in this span of time. As someone who hates people who call baseball boring, these statistics proved their point. 

Yes, there was the lockout of 1994 where players participated in a 232 day strike in response to MLB owners' insistence upon a salary cap (a maximum limit on salaries). While this makes for a small outlier in the data, it isn’t reasonable to remove this season from these statistics, since the lockout is just another instance of the MLB killing its own industry. 

NO FANS = NO ATTENDANCE

When no one wants to watch the game on TV, nobody wants to go to the games in person either. In what I like to call the “Baseball Depression”, from ’71–’95, the entire MLB averaged 43,894,694 people in total attendance (every team combined for 162 games) which is about 1.5 million for each team and only about 8,500 fans in attendance per game. 

Something even crazier is that in the 70s, the Boston Celtics averaged 11,534 fans in attendance per game, while the Red Sox only averaged 11,201. While the numbers look similar, Fenway Park has about 38,000 seats and the old Boston Garden only had 14,000, meaning that the Sox only filled up 29.5% of their stadium each game, while the Celtics packed the Garden with 82% capacity. People simply did not want to go to baseball games.

THE START

Steroids made it to the MLB’s banned substance list in 1991; however, players were not tested for them. Then came 1996. In 1995, there were only four players who hit 40 or more home runs, but in 1996, there were seventeen of them. Mark McGwire led the way with 52 homers. This was the official beginning of the Steroid Era in the MLB. A year later, in 1997, two players hit more than 50 home runs (McGwire and Griffey Jr.) This trend continued all the way up until 2003, when the MLB issued performance enhancing drug (PED) tests. From 1996–2003, the MLB averaged 4,581 home runs per year (1,300 more than the previous 25 years). Sixteen different times, a player went over 50 homers, with some reaching the 60s and 70s. It wasn’t just the home runs, either. In ’96, there were 3,277 more runs scored than the previous year. Baseball was becoming entertaining once again.

CAUSE & EFFECT

Only one year after teams started to actually display offense, the total attendance in MLB ballparks grew by 10,000,000 people. Ten million. In one year. That alone should prove my point, but I could go on and on. In these eight years of juicing, the total ballpark attendance for the whole MLB was over 68 million on average, a near 60% increase from the average of the previous 25 years. Not to mention, the MLB’s revenue grew from $1.4 billion in 1995 to $3.7 billion in 2001, and the average ticket price rose from $10 to $18.50 — not bad for a market that was over 100 years old. With baseball’s entertainment level rising, fans were excited to return to the ballpark.

PEOPLE TO THANK

The Home Run Race of 1998 between McGwire and Sosa made baseball prime time TV every time they stepped up to the plate. With both of them breaking the previous single season record of 61 homers, McGwire just beat Sosa 70-66. Although Sosa’s Cubs and McGwire’s Cardinals weren’t in the race for the playoffs, their booming home runs were what drew the attention of the country. They were trading moonshot for moonshot, and no one wanted to miss it. Thank you for making people invested in America’s pastime.

Finally, as controversial as it may sound, thank you to the greatest baseball player to ever live. No, not Babe Ruth or Ted Williams. Not Lou Gehrig or Mickey Mantle. Barry Lamar Bonds. The uneducated think he only hit 762 home runs because of steroids. However, even before he admitted to using PEDs, Bonds had a strong case for the Hall of Fame. He was one of the league's best hitters, recording 374 homers, 1,094 RBIs, and 417 stolen bases from 1986-97. If he hadn’t gone on steroids in the late 90s, Bonds wouldn’t have been ridiculed by the baseball community. But the community should treat him with respect regardless. His 388 home runs from ’98 to ’07 saved our sport from collapsing. And if you take the approach that these drugs made his entire career, do your research and try again. Being able to hit a 98 mile per hour fastball is something 95% of the planet cannot do. Yes, steroids boosted their strength, but the extraordinary skill these players already had deserves our appreciation. 

And yes, please attack me for not including the television ratings for the regular season or World Series. It is evident that those have decreased over the years, especially in the 90s. However, baseball is about the experience at the ballpark and watching the game in person. Before the Steroid Era, people were losing interest in that experience. There is no doubt that it lines up. When players juiced, more people went to games. More importantly, they enjoyed the games. Steroids saved baseball.