The "it" that Jose Conseco is talking about is steroids. and Mr Conseco is a famous baseball player, mostly for the steroid scandals that surrounded his career. A lot of people will tell you that players like Conseco ruined baseball, and that baseball is still trying to recover from the consequences of steroids, but based on the numbers these players saved baseball from falling out of the American Culture. Thanks to steroids baseball's popularity grew in the 1990s thanks to its ability to increase the home run, which led to more fans attending games, and when fans attend games, they spend money and the money is a good way of tracking popularity.
In the 145 years of baseball history there have been 313 total 40 Home Run seasons, and in the last 20 years we've seen more 40 Home Run seasons than in the preceding 125 years with 83 of them occurring between 1996 and 2001 which is known as the beginning of the steroid era. In the peak of those 6 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought the MLB back from its abysmal slump with a home run race for the ages. Coming into the the last month of the season they were neck-and-neck for the fight for Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a single season. At the end of the month Sammy Sosa ended with 66 and Mark McGwire won with 70 home runs.
In the 1995 season, total attendance across all teams was roughly 50.5 million, but with the kick off of the steroid era, attendance rose, in 1998 the MLB recorded a record high at the time of 70.6 million attendees in one year.
The money may still be rising, but the statistics are not. In 2013 the only player to hit 40 Home Runs was Nelson Cruz, and the total attendance for the MLB has tapered to 73 million. The growth of the MLB has fallen because these players are not putting up their video game numbers anymore. If it weren't for Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's home run record, or Alex Rodriguez with his two steroid scandals, or Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hitting a combined 136 home runs in one season baseball would have made the way of the Dodo or David Letterman, we'd be hanging the sport up in the rafters. We should be honoring and thanking these players for sacrificing their bodies for a sport they, and we, love.
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