Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball

"It has come to be known as "the Juiced Era." In the decade that followed the 1994 players' strike, Major League Baseball rode the greatest offensive explosion of the twentieth century to reap unprecedented profits and become more popular than it had been in decades. It was a miraculous comeback for a sport that appeared to have incurred irreversible damage from the 232-day strike that forced the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in ninety years. Commissioner Bud Selig proudly declared it a renaissance." "But there was a dark side to Selig's renaissance, a black cloud that would soon cast a shadow over the entire sport, calling into question some of the game's greatest accomplishments and casting several of the era's greatest players as cheaters and liars." "Juicing the Game, the first complete history of the Juiced Era exposes baseball's crippling lack of leadership and pursuit of profit at the expense of the integrity of the game and its record book. Drawing from interviews with all of the era's major figures - including Commissioners Bud Selig and Fay Vincent, Players Association heads Donald Fehr and Marvin Miller, baseball executives Sandy Alderson and Rob Manfred, team executives Billy Beane and Brian Cashman, and players ranging from Reggie Jackson to Tony Gwynn to Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield - as well as original research by Bill James, it combines hard-hitting investigative journalism with a dramatic narrative that leaves no stone unturned, from Jose Canseco's controversial career and Brady Anderson's fluke 1996 season to the BALCO investigation and the congressional hearings in the spring of 2005. It is a captivating history of a tainted era that has in turn tainted the game forever."--BOOK JACKET.