Scribes in the Time of Steroids

The steroid era was a moment of deception but also of starry-eyed self-deception; if it was a breakdown of integrity on the part of baseball’s stars it was also, in some measure, a failure of sports journalism.

.. I remember watching Mark McGwire transform into a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float version of himself and hit nine-thousand-foot home runs every other game and thinking that something was amiss. In that very same moment, I also somehow shelved my doubts so that I could enjoy the spectacle or, when I was feeling fancy, “witness history.” The sportswriting of that period, too, reveals a curious human talent for simultaneously knowing and not knowing.