The Steroids Era Interlude (??)
Also: the "Cover Story" promo tour begins?
Hi everyone. Welcome to my newsletter companion to “Cover Story,” a basketball book I wrote which is set for release on October 19th and is available for pre-order here. If you want to tell your followers about my book, feel free to share this tweet or this Instagram post. If you’re not a newsletter subscriber, click here to make sure you get every post in your inbox.
Remember the summer of ‘98 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa revived America’s Pastime with a historic home run chase. McGwire finished with 70 home runs. Sosa only hit 66 baseballs out of the park. The two sluggers broke Roger Maris’s home run record of 61 and landed themselves on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year issue.
"There was no shortage of Sportsmen of the Year candidates for 1998,” managing editor Bill Colson said at the time. “But with the joyful and dignified way Sammy and Mark carried themselves on and off the field during their pursuit of immortality, we felt both men were clearly the best choice."
I’ve been thinking a lot about The Steroids Era recently, and not just because of hilarious moments like Sammy Sosa conducting interviews in English throughout his career and then suddenly showing up to a Congressional hearing with a translator, but also on how we vilified certain players like Barry Bonds, who was so great at baseball he had a Hall of Fame career before he took performance-enhancing drugs and after he took performance-enhancing drugs.
This statistic came across my timeline last week, and holy shit:
I’m not the biggest baseball fan in the world, but I know these on-base percentages are out of this world. Once every few months, I’ll visit Barry Bonds’s Baseball Reference page just to marvel at some of the numbers he put up.
From 2001 to 2004, this man had an on-base percentage of over .500. In 2004, his OBP was .609, and he was intentionally walked 120 times in 147 games.
To this day, I still maintain being intentionally walked with the bases loaded is one of the most badass things to ever happen in sports. Just imagine the respect you’re getting. The other team is saying we will concede a run instead of pitching to you. Like damn.
I don’t remember the same level of McGwire-Sosa excitement when Bonds set the record in 2001 with 73 home runs. There are several reasons for that. Bonds was generally an asshole to the media during his career. The season was interrupted because of September 11th, which put a damper on the home run chase towards the end of the season.
There was also the whole steroids thing (remember BALCO?). ESPN has a pretty detailed timeline here if you want to take a trip down memory lane. I highly recommend “Game of Shadows” by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, which goes in-depth into all of this and is one of my favorite sports books of all-time. Anyways, if I ever do a “Cover Story 2” of assorted sports covers, I’m definitely doing an entire chapter on The Steroids Era.
I went on the How Long Gone podcast last week to chat about a bunch of things including Barry Bonds’s ridiculous on-base percentage, how I’m living in the year 2021 with an ‘01 Honda Civic, some sports media talk, and why my dad hates going to Chinese restaurants. You can listen to the episode here (Technically this was to promote the book but I ended up just kicking it with Chris and Jason for an hour which honestly feels like a good book promo strategy. Sometimes you promo the book. Other times you promo the author).
Their podcast got a nice, shiny New York Times profile last week which you can read here. I’ve never had so many random people DM and email me about a podcast appearance so I can confirm their show is doing great. For an actual podcast centered around the book, I’ve lined up interviews with my two favorite basketball podcasts Pound The Rock and No Dunks where I’ll dive more into “Cover Story” so look for those episodes in October.
In case you missed it, the “Cover Story” x Destiny’s Child print by Dana Smart is now available for purchase here. If you’re new here, make sure you check out previous newsletter posts featuring interviews with Mirin Fader, Nathaniel Butler, Russ Bengtson, Ryan Jones, Kevin Luyster, Tony Gervino, Scoop Jackson, and Jeff Weiss. See you next time.
Thanks for reading the newsletter. Feel free to subscribe if it’s your first time reading. You can pre-order “Cover Story” here and find me on Twitter and Instagram. Email me if you want to chat.