If you were a baseball fan in the ’90s to early 2000s, then you definitely will recall the “Juice Ball” era.
You know, when a number of MLB stars were discovered using steroids after hitting an ungodly amount of home runs season after season, such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco (who basically outed most of these people), and more.
Of course, if you were around in 1998, nothing was more electric than the home run race between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, both on a mission to break Roger Maris’ single season home run record (and both did). Of course, Barry Bonds would set the current record at 73 just a few years later.
Most of those guys were practically blackballed by the MLB, and their reputation has forever been tainted over the fact that they were juicing up back in the day.
However, many have argued about if the hate towards these players is warranted or not. After all, it wasn’t illegal at the time, and a number of players were on it… should players be penalized for utilizing all available competitive advantages?
With that being said, Mark McGwire made an appearance on the Legends Territory podcast, to discuss if he and the fellow stars have been unfairly punished.
McGwire was brutally honest with his response about being unfairly punished:
“It seems like it… that’s what it is. You know I think I heard Barry say it the other day, you know there was no rules, no regulation. Believe me, trust me, if there was any rules in place, then that stuff would’ve never happened.
There was no testing, there was no nothing. And I agree with what Barry was saying, it’s like that was the culture. That’s what was going on back in those days, and whatever.
But I can personally tell you for me, knowing me, listen, I didn’t need to do it, and I apologized for it, but there was a lot of f*cking hard work that went behind all the sh*t people want to give me.”
Needless to say, it sounds like Mark is ready to put all of this stuff away.
Listen for yourself:
