Baseball's Steroid Era

When the cameras stopped rolling, Wallace asked me if we could talk, off camera. He kept me there for another hour, clearly curious about steroids. He had more questions and more intelligent questions than I'd heard in the years of counseling my fellow players. He wondered how the steroids and human growth hormones (HGH) might help him, a man in his eighties, live a longer, healthier life. He wanted to know everything. How long it took for the drugs to kick in. The potential side effects. The effects on mental clarity. How they made you look - could they change your face? He was hungry for information, and he'd come to the right guy: the God-father of Steroids. I answered every question, and I did it gladly. Everyone is interested in living longer and living better.

It was hard to believe. Only four years earlier I had hit 46 home runs in a single season, something that maybe two or three dozen players had managed since baseball began, in the 1870s. Now I was expected to believe that there wasn't a single team in the entire league that could use a guy with my talent. In 2001, the last season I played, I batted .258 and hit 16 home runs in only 76 games. That's on pace for a 33-run season. Only eighteen guys in the entire league hit over 33 home runs in 2002!