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

by Howard Bryant

Overview

In Juicing the Game, award-winning journalist Howard Bryant offers the only big-picture look at the insidious manner in which performance-enhancing drugs infested baseball as the game’s leaders stood idly by, reaping the rewards.

Combining hard-hitting investigative journalism with interviews with baseball heavyweights such as Jason Giambi, Commissioner Bud Selig, union head Donald Fehr, and Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson among many others, Juicing the Game is the definitive book on both the steroid scandal and the era it has irreversibly tainted. BACKCOVER: “A rich and measured tale of the last dishonest decade . . . No more comprehensive, balanced or fair account exists. Bryant carefully and powerfully builds his case. The self-inflicted catastrophe could have no better chronicler.”
—Los Angeles Times 

“If there ever was a ‘must read’ sports book of its time, this is it. Because of the undeniable truths it tells, Bryant’s book is essential reading.”
—The Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440649554
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/28/2006
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	600 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Howard Bryant is the author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, which was a finalist for the Society for American Baseball Research’s 2003 Seymour Medal, and Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball. He is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine; appears regularly on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, ESPN First Take, and Outside the Lines; and serves as sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

Jose Canesco's bestselling Juiced was a personal tell-all about baseball drug use. Howard Bryant's Juicing the Game is the first book to chronicle the entire history of the Age of Steroids, from which the major leagues are still attempting to recover. The Boston Herald sports columnist describes how baseball, in its effort to rebound from the devastating 1994 players' strike, ignored the warning signals of this developing crisis. The entire book is informed by Bryant's extensive interviews with players, team owners, and league officials.

If ever there was a "must read" sports book of its time, this is it. Because of the undeniable truths it tells, Bryant's book is essential reading. His argument depends less on statistics and figures than on his willingness to uncover what many people suspected and more than a few knew to be true.
—The Washington Post

Larry Moffi

Mr. Bryant's book, which draws upon in-depth interviews with players, baseball executives, union leaders, team managers and journalists, is informed by a deep knowledge of baseball history. And it's valuable not only for its lucid, unvarnished account of the steroid scandal and its long-term consequences for the game, but also for putting that scandal in context with other conflicts like the decades-old clash between owners and players, the divisiveness fostered by the growing importance of television (which tends to showcase individual heroics over team efforts, home runs over less spectacular plays) and pitchers' complaints that the game's recent infatuation with offense has devalued their own craft.Indeed, the post-strike years would see what Mr. Bryant calls "a power surge the likes of which the game hadn't seen since the 1930's."
— The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani