No Escaping Steroids Over Past Decade

Over the remainder of the year, FanHouse will be covering the top sports stories of the decade. In this installment, Jeff Fletcher looks at MLB FanHouse's pick for the story of the decade, steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

It was the story that wouldn't go away, no matter how much we tried to forget about it.

As soon as Ken Caminiti admitted to Sports Illustrated in May 2002 that his All-Star career, and his MVP season, had been fueled by steroids, Major League Baseball was changed forever.

Caminiti's admission was the match that lit the fuse in a place where there had only been whiffs of smoke. For the rest of the decade, the story of steroids in baseball would be one that continued to unfold in repeated, disturbing fashion.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez -- four of the sport's biggest names -- all had their careers tarnished by allegations of steroid use, as did scores of less accomplished players.

The Steroid Era is now as much a part of the baseball lexicon as the Deadball Era or the Expansion Era, and all the numbers compiled in the late '90s and 2000s are subject to skepticism, at least, and ignorance, at most.

Jose Canseco, the self-proclaimed father of steroid use in the majors, first came under suspicion in the late 1980s. There were more hints of steroid use as players got bigger and the homers more frequent into the late '90s, capped by the memorable home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998.

As Bonds was on his way to breaking McGwire's single-season record with a ridiculous 73 homers in 2001, the public scrutiny grew even more. Finally, in 2002, Caminiti admitted to Sports Illustrated that he and many other players had been using steroids.

That prompted the owners, who until then had mostly turned a blind eye to steroid use, to push for the a new testing program in the collective bargaining agreement signed in August 2002.

In 2003, Bonds officially became the posterboy for the Steroid Era when he was connected to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which was investigated by the federal government for providing steroids to athletes. That story, which was chronicled later in the book Game of Shadows, sparked federal court proceedings that saw a conga line of well-known athletes, including Bonds, marching before a grand jury to testify about whether they had used steroids. Bonds said he hadn't knowingly used steroids, a claim that would later result in him being charged with perjury. He is still awaiting trial.

Congress also got involved on several occasions, bringing current and former players, union head Donald Fehr and commissioner Bud Selig before a circus-like hearing in spring of 2005.

In 2006, Selig authorized former Senator George Mitchell to do an extensive report on steroid use in baseball. Mitchell spent 20 months and millions of dollars producing a 311-page report that included the names of 89 former and current major leaguers. Mitchell received almost no cooperation from current players and team officials, so much of his report was based on the BALCO investigation and the testimony of a couple steroid dealers who had struck deals with the government.

The decade's final big headlines in the steroid story came in 2009, starting with Rodriguez's forced admission that he had used steroids earlier in his career. In May, Ramirez became the first marquee player to be suspended under the revised steroid policy. He accepted a 50-game ban because of evidence he had used a female fertility drug often taken to mask the use of steroids.

While the Ramirez suspension was a black eye for baseball, to Selig it was proof that the policy does have teeth, and no player is above the rules. Ramirez and Pablo Ozuna were the only major leaguers suspended for violating the drug policy during the 2009 season, further encouraging Selig that the Steroid Era has come to a close.

The lingering issue is what to do with the performances of all those players who accumulated numbers in the Steroid Era, specifically when it comes to the Hall of Fame. The writers who vote for the Hall remain uncertain, as a group, how to vote. McGwire, who has been on the ballot three times, has not come close to getting the 75 percent of votes he needs for enshrinement.

While the media still seems to be indignant about steroid use and what it has meant to the integrity of the game and its history, there is little evidence that the general public cares, except when it gives fans another excuse to boo a player they didn't like in the first place.

Attendance at games and television ratings rose throughout the decade. Fans showed that they enjoyed the home runs hit by juiced players, especially if they helped their favorite team win.

Just about the only point of agreement among the players, fans and media is that they wished the steroid story was one that didn't need to be told.